Steven Hahn, Wesley Lowery and Heather Cox Richardson | Moderated by: Kurt Andersen

[Music] [Applause] it is my great pleasure and privilege to be sharing this stage with three people uh for whom I have the greatest respect and of whom I am a fan in each and both all three cases um but and I could go on about why I love their work as much as I do um but I'm going to start uh by simply having them address the idea of democracy in this country and I'm struck given that for instance and understandably the the half of the if not more of the Biden uh reelection pitch is routinely summarized as democracy democracy as if nothing else need to be said about what that means and it of course effectively doesn't given his opponent and the party he opposes but democracy is a word not in the Declaration of Independence not in the Constitution of the United States and I wanted the books novels I wrote was written set set in 1848 when democracy had just begun maybe to acquire its something like its modern meaning although socialism and democracy were virtually Sy synonyms at the time so I'm curious about the the evolution of democracy from a word that referred to ancient Antiquity you know agent Greece and so forth to what it came to mean by the end of the 19th century and is it my Am I Wrong to imagine that it hasn't after after sort of appearance and becoming the normal cial way people talk about the American system and life political life that it's it it kind of hasn't evolved in the last century as much or is it now suddenly evolving and we must adapt our Notions of what democracy even means okay I guess it's me um well first of all thank you all so much for coming and thank my fellow panelists who are really fantastic and I'm honored to be here you know uh one of the ways in which the book I um just Road took off was uh back in 20156 uh as the Trump campaign uh developed I was really struck by the way in which a variety of of observers um many journalists others who were you know very thoughtful and educated talk about talked about the way he violated liberal Democratic Norms um I was struck by that because as a historian I wasn't exactly sure what those were and after all by 2015 uh the Supreme Court had uh intervened uh in a presidential election uh we had citizens united uh we had the basically undermining of the Voting Rights Act uh many states were in the process of uh redefining their um election laws to make voting more difficult especially for certain kind of populations and I think it was a you know for me it was sort of a an opport Unity to reflect on in fact how shaky uh what we call American democracy has always been uh the way in which it has um been exclusionary the way in which it has been based on um the repression of certain groups of people the uh denial of rights to certain groups of people and so you know in my own work I thought I would see what I could learn Le from kind of exploring those roots but I think as you say you know democracy is not something that surfaces uh very early in the founding of the American Republic I mean this is certainly something that Heather writes about and uh you know it took a long time but even in periods that we one of the things I try to do in my book was not pick out moments that uh were clearly um objectionable but in fact those moments when when we associate most directly with um democracy and Democratic um uh developments and to suggest the complicated ways in which uh those were really defied so I think it's important for us to at least recognize what we're up against and it's not something that has happened in the past few years or past few decades but it's something that has pretty deeply entrenched was there not I mean I think part of the one of the reasons that Trump was seen as this sudden shift uh in things is is that nobody until him had had gotten in the way at least of the myth of incremental constant progress towards a fuller democracy and and and he seemed to stand up and say all but say and now says I'd like to be a dictator uh that he's against effectively democracy is is is is certainly he's a milestone of of newness despite whatever roots that existed of of our less than full let alone perfect democracy is that correct that speaks right to your work well yeah I was going to say I think I think what is interesting is what we see so even newer than the idea of democracy is the idea of multiracial democracy right which goes even Beyond um and is still a an idea in its infancy in an American context um we have been a uh it has been a very small if the story of America was five five television Seasons long this is the plot twist at the very end that makes everyone stop watching the show right you've watched four seasons of American at the very end they're like sure what if we let the black people vote maybe have a president and it's like the show is not this is not what the show is about at all what are you guys talking about right but I said that to say that the um what we have seen throughout throughout the history of the United States has been at times when there have been steps towards making our practice match our principles however we Define those principles we almost always see a reversion to the mean and a backlash to them right Charles blow who I was talking to yesterday in his book he talks about how we basically have a 50-year horizon every 50 years we take a a pretty remarkable step toward multiracial democracy equality equity and then immediately we see a pretty remarkable backlash to that uh be that uh through the results of uh the Riots of enslaved people and and then the the crackdowns that we see in response to that whether the Civil War and reconstruction government and then the right supremacist Redemption that comes following that the advances of the civil rights movement that then usher in the 7s and 80s um and the in the Reagan Era right um and then we elect a black man to be the president uh begin grappling with structural systemic inequalities and now we are locked in a reactionary uh political movement and moment that we're in now and so um it is very interesting because sitting I mean we're not that long into the hindsight Beyond uh the election of a black president and also frankly the remarkable demographic shift of the country which is happening and and and it speaks to this moment and when we look at the history the moment we are now in is actually very predictable this was what was going to happen um it challenges th especially those of us who have been born into an America uh where we have the idea of multi-racial democracy I think what is hard for us is this has held up a mirror to show the distance between our principles and our practice right that we are actually not occupying a full multi-racial democracy even as many of us in fact a majority of us believe in that and I think that is part of what's been so disconcerting for so many people and and Heather I mean Steve talked about how you know IL liberal America is is traces the roots of of these anti-democratic impulses in in American history um as Once Upon a Time at least an historian of the Republican party uh was the party of Lincoln between the beginning and and let's say the civil rights moment were were there roots or like oh I see that coming of of this this extraordinary authoritarian ter so there are three questions there one is the origins of the Republican Party in the 1850s and their original ideology which the party has not embraced since Eisenhower and they've gone back and forth since then and then there's the next question of whether Donald Trump was an aberration and I would say that he was not he held up a mirror to what a certain population had been primed to want and then um and then there is the the question that you also asked about what democracy is and you know I'd like to start with that democracy idea it's a very basic one it's in the Declaration of Independence that you have a right to be treated equally before the law and you have a right to have a say in your government those are freaking revolutionary but let me just say about these two men sitting next to me their books are fabulous um and I have to say Steve's new book Steve hans's new book that one um it it it the topic is a little off-putting but I was trying to think of the words that would describe it when I was coming down here I think I said this to you earlier there is this gentle lyricism to his description of the way illiberal thought has developed in the United States that makes you feel like it's authoritative without I can't sleep tonight this is the way the world is but it doesn't have to be this way and similar oh I'm sorry and I didn't blur a it actually or anything this is I liked it I like that book a lot hopefully someone was recording that for the paperback you got it and Wes's book is how we got here from a much closer time and it's a very it's this window into how we got this white lash against um against the the rise of Multicultural democracy in the present but I had a question for you to that speaks to the same point that you're making and that is what drives the moments when we don't fall into that illiberal democracy or into that white lash because I don't believe they're inevitable and and also and I'm I'm really treading here uh Steve is the the country's expert I shouldn't probably have said that one doesn't like to say that because I'm sure I pissed somebody off the older you get um the more you on populism and there's a really interesting dichotomy in your books Thea the trajectory of your books that the populists are good the 1890s and now they're bad in the in the 19 what whatever Year we're in and I wonder I wonder if that has to do with those questions because isn't that what we're really talking about if we're losing the right to have a say in our government and to be treated equally before the law why the hell are people putting up with that go I'm no I'm leaning on the foremost expert well and let me add let me add no let me just add an an extra question on that same question which is and I'm thinking oh we're in Louisiana oh there was a left-wing populist who was accused of being a fascist here 90 years ago long is that even though oh but he was trying to do good we may think if we're left um but is is that eruption of basically anti-democratic feeling in the service of some he thought higher better goal along with the demagog and everything that we see today a different thing or simply a different ideological package well huy long is a very complicated figure uh who in some ways embraced left and right and certainly power um one of the things that's really fascinating is that if you go back to the turn of the 20th century uh when the Socialist Party had been organized and was running for office on Multi I mean we tend to think about Eugene Debs in 1912 but in point of fact the Socialist party elected many many people to the state legislatures and to local offices and where did this happened in Louisiana Texas Oklahoma Kansas and The Dakotas you know Milwaukee had a socialist mayor for a long time and then we might want to ask why the red States became the red States right so I think that's you know a really important issue I I think the you know the issue one of the things we we need you know there is a sense that history is a linear thing that somehow or other we build on gains that we have made before and we keep M it's kind of the American Redemption story we have sinned in the past but we are trying to born again yeah we're trying to you know sort of uh Rectify those sins and you know when Barack Obama was elected you know the first thing response which didn't take very long was you know now we're in a post-racial society when of course as you point out um the backlash was already taken place within days and of course the tea party was organized uh not long after that I think the question that Heather raised a is a really important one which is what are those moments when there is not only simply a push back but a kind of eruption of something new and different what sort of circumstances make that possible and what sort of uh aspirations and Visions go into that I mean we have seen that over the course of US history in some extraordinary ways um certainly the Civil Rights Movement was uh one of those we see them in smaller ways around us on a regular basis and uh I think it's uh it's um it's an important issue to think about how we can uh create circumstances in which change that we can really um embrace you know is possible it's a pretty um dispiriting moment now you know as as I was thinking about that question the first the first thing I was thinking about was even a less of a historical lens and more of a sociological psychological lens of that and I was thinking of the scholar Derek Bell um who is one of the founders of the critical race Theory as properly defined not Fox News version critical race Theory but actual critical race Theory uh but but one of the things he wrote about was the idea of Interest conversion that one of his key and and Derek Bell had been a civil rights attorney across the South actively working on desegregation and voting rights um and much of his political science afterwards was based in the idea of why didn't this work we spent all of this time invested in these legal fights and yet racism is still all over the place and seemingly intractable and what's going on and and his interest Convergence Theory and he said it in a racial lens but I think it I don't think he would mind me applying it even more broadly than that right is that the moments where we see significant progress towards multi multi-racial democracy multiracial equality are moments in which uh the majority the white majority of the country believes it is in its own self-interest to pursue equality right that we do not Embrace democracy as an idea just because we think it is a good thing we embrace it collectively in the moments when we believe it is best for us individually and in the moment when that shifts be that due to a war do that due to economics due to a reactionary backlash about what's being taught in schools or about changing racial or gender Norms or about any number of of things those then become the moments where we collectively step backwards right but that when we see the moments whether it being well the country is being torn apart over slavery and we actually can't exist if we don't get rid of this thing and figure that out right or moments where the cities are on fire and this seems like a major threat to us and all they all they want to do is be able to vote Yes let them do that right that we have moments where the collective believes it is in its own best interest to now bestow democracy upon a minority be that a racial minority a gender minority but the problem is those end up being momentary moments of clarity not actually long-term sustained belief and that in the moment when suddenly it is no longer in our what we no longer believe it to be in our own Collective best interest right suddenly we start to see a reversion to that I I wonder and I have wondered if in addition to the obvious civil rights moment and the backlash to that beginning in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act and various attempts at extending civil rights affirmative action in all of its forms if in addition to that at the same time of course course instituted by the same Democratic president who signed the civil rights laws Civil Rights Act uh our immigration laws were radically changed and we went from a country that had for essentially 200 years been 85% white pretty consistently to a country that over you know less than I don't know half my lifetime or a little more than half my lifetime to 60 something per white that's a huge change Beyond any expansion of Rights for for nonwhite people right it it seems to me that in terms of what we when we look for something what drove this incred this this large backlash that we're seeing on the right among Republicans that's got to be a big part of it is it not well you know I don't think the I don't think Steve would disagree with me on this that we get tend to get the expansion of liberal democracy at a time when people's economy feels very good and the fact that since uh 1981 as much as $53 trillion have moved from the bottom 90% of the population to the very top has not helped but I actually want to join um Dr Bell on this because I think it's interesting that Abraham Lincoln managed to convince a whole bunch of white men that they should get behind the idea of emancipation at a time when the north was really in bad shape there's a depression in 1857 and the it really looked like the north was going under and it really was going to be the South that was going to call the shots going forward simply because they're the ones who had all the money and I wonder if the answer at least the answer for me is that the way you fight back against the inevitable attempt of a minority to take over from the ma majority which is what we're looking at in all of these periods is by the way we construct the arguments by our storytellers and one of the things that worries me and I think that we have seen really since the Voting Rights Act and even since before that after World War II and the establishment of the liberal consensus when the Republican Party buys on to it under Eisenhower is the fact that we thought it was a done deal you know people still say Well they're never going to touch Social Security I got news for you there's a plan on paper to touch Social Security oh they're never going to touch Medicare there's a plan on paper to touch Medicare and oh come on roie Wade is the law of the land and I wonder if that roie Wade overturning in January in uh June of 2022 with uh dobs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization decision is the moment that finally has woken people up to say we've got to reconstruct how we talk about the issues of and and the next third rail if indeed they started cutting Medicare and Social Security wild would be discovered I believe that you're you're right they have a plan and that has been the goal of the certainly the donor class of the right for ever since the New Deal um but um it strikes me that uh that especially I I'm curious about what you all think about the Republican party today in this you know it has been for 60 years this odd strange bedfellows combination of the Business Roundtable corporate leaders and the rich and increasingly the white working class whose interests one has to say are ultimately uh economic interests are are in opposition to each other I understand deflections can be put up of oh Trans people oh bathrooms oh all those up to a point but can they continue forever without the this contemporary version of the Republican Party exploding so I would argue that beginning in 1986 that that supply side economics donor class as you're calling them organiz part of the Republican party I recognized it didn't have the votes it's in 1986 that we start to see voter suppression under the idea of ballot Integrity which was designed to throw black people off the the polls we know that from memos that we've seen it's also in 1986 that we get the deliberate attempt to start packing the courts with the idea that you no longer actually have to legislate in Congress and elect people to Congress if you can get 51 votes in the Senate because then you can simply pack the courts with right-wing people and throw um the throw cases into the courts and those will have the benefit of becoming Law Without ever actually having to go through Congress and Edwin me who was Ronald Reagan's attorney general actually said that this is what he was doing he was going to make sure that the Reagan revolution could never be overturned no matter what people said at the polls and that was because they were worried about the 1986 tax cuts at that point they also recognized they needed voters and so they quite deliberately brought what they called um traditional voters people who wanted to make sure women stayed subordinate to men and uh and segregationist voters racists into the Republican party never expecting that they would start to call the shots so if you and the way they kept that those people behind the Republican party was to increase the the the heat of the rhetoric that they used so that the idea that somebody is liberal which used to include Republicans as well as Democrats became an epithet and then we added you know first it was black people who were dangerous then it was brown people then it was women then you know then it was Democrats and by the time we got Trump in office it was even Republicans who didn't agree with him I mean the the people who are true Republicans now are you know Trump his brother and and I don't know the neighbor down the street basically they're such a small group um but the current day Republican party is no longer the Republican party it is dead the Republican party is dead you know for years people said to me is the Republican party going to die and I kept saying no it's really not it's got the the lists it's got the traditions and it's got the money well guess what Donald Trump has monopolized the lists which are now grifter lists the um uh the uh the money of course is um is all now currently after two weeks ago going into the Trump organization and um the the the pieces that used to keep the party together and I thought would make it reborn are gone and it has become something very different that we have never seen before in the United States and that is a party that is dicta the Trump party mind you this is not a statement about Republicans the Republican party is a grand old party that has a great history and its ideology is deep in our DNA you may not agree with it you may agree with it that's not what's going on in this party what we have now is an authoritarian party that is trying to destroy democracy and that either has to get moved offside and back under the rock it belongs under um or it's going to destroy our our country but but won't it one of the things that I remember the final commercial in the 2016 uh election of Donald Trump's 2 minutes long the script almost could have been a Bernie Sanders commercial it was anti-wall Street anti the elite picking your pockets you know don't touch Medicare uh it you know so I mean of course he didn't govern that way it was the first of the biggest lies um and the question is is that tenable to sort of say that and campaign on that wow that's why and I think a large fraction of his voters in 2016 like yeah he's different than Republicans he you know he he was in 2016 he was the most moderate economic Republic running he called for infrastructure he called for Better Health Care and cheaper Health Care he called for getting rid of the tax loopholes and he called for bringing back manufacturing of course none of that actually happened I say we're in a very different place right now but I actually think this goes back to the question that I was asking Steve about because you you talk about American democracy and that means the voice of the people so how come sometimes the people seem to do good things and sometimes they seem to do bad things and we tend to remember the good things like with the American Revolution remember the good guys and not the ones who burned down New York and I wonder if the answer is that we tend to Champion populism when it is directed by people who move it toward expanding rights versus when we move it toward people who are reducing rights and I don't know if that's the case because of course the populists were virulently anti-semitic and that's why sitting on a stage with the country's top person in populism I'm like I get to ask about mobs um well um well let let me let me say a couple of things um one is that first of all um you know I think it's important for us to recognize that you know the the social base of trumpism I think has uh often times missed the fact that it's not the white working class it is small business people um you know sort of I'm you know it's almost classically fascist with a sort of petty Bourgeois folks people who were in construction people who are in you know very potentially volatile and difficult uh circumstances which might help us understand why their populism has none of this sort of economic critique that the populists of the late 19 I mean the populace of the late 19th century whatever their other shortcomings and that's exactly right focused their attention on the economic oligarchy and they focused their attention on the way in which the elite enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else and they proposed um a platform that was designed to redist you know weaken that power and redistribute wealth this is not what the PO you know populism now is basically a synonym for rage right mostly white Rage that's directed against Elites who like us um who don't have economic power because that's not what they're demanding they're talking about Elites who are seen as having cultural power who are seen as potentially violating their sense of normaly and their sense of order and the the uh world that they um you know grew up in so to speak one of the things I did want to mention and I think it's related to Heather's point you know in 1986 uh to use that year I was involved in the Voting Rights um suit lawsuit in Mississippi it was brought by the lawyers committee for civil rights under law and what we were doing was challenging this is 1986 20 years after basically 20 years after the Voting Rights Act Right what we were challenging was Mississippi's dual registration law which meant that you had register twice in order to vote once in national elections and once in state and local elections and you could only vote at the County Courthouse between 9 and 5 Monday through Friday now at that point you know the black population of Mississippi uh had few motorized vehicles the county courthouse was a symbol uh of racial repression now we managed to win that case uh even with the Reagan appointed judge because it was so egregious but one of the things it does demonstrate is um and I think this gets to Wesley's Point uh as well is that the over the course of our history the only people who have been committed to an expansive idea of democracy are the people who have been denied it and what we need to recognize is they're the ones who need to take leadership role in trying to help us understand what kind of country we want to live in if we live believe in the values of some of our earlier foundational documents like the Declaration of Independence because the people who believe in them are most likely the people who have not benefited uh from the world that these um you know uh documents have made w i i I'm I have a question for you about as I uh have seen in my lifetime uh you know my recent Lifetime the Republican party go from a normal decent conservative party to what it is today and and you however are are the child on this panel you're 37 and and so I mean are we getting into that now well um that basically you came of age as the party was going off the rails right I mean um you weren't born that long before Pat Buchanan was winning primaries and so forth so is is is your point of view like so many young people I know for instance my daughters affected by the fact that the the the they they don't know a system a healthy two-party system no I've never never witnessed such a system right it's the that it's an idea um but it's not something that's ever existed in reality not certainly not during my cognitive lifetime Pro you know there's an argument that I was alive for a day in which we had you know but but but in terms of a moment I can remember certainly not right and I and I think that that um and I get and I think what is true and what his heart has been the you know I I think that there was a even as we got into 16 um there was a belief so much of The Branding in Elite spaces so much of the understanding in polite Elite spaces where we're all at the same cocktail parties or we're all at so- and- so's book thing or we you know um and this Republican Senators just this there there was always an understanding in the club of well certainly some of our people are like that but you know us we're not this way and I and I do think that that actually likely LED in some cases to an overestimation of of the extent to which the the institution that was the Republican Party could hold and would hold there was an underestimation of the extent to which uh these uh these hostilities that had been stoked within their base actually were the thing Binding Together the collective not small government Paul Ryan economic ideology not even Frank our conceptualization of the early 2000s compassionate conservatism evangelicalism right that is actually a very different Subs we haven't talked about that right and so I think that was a very it's a watching all of that come together and the clarity with that has been very interesting right I think even to this day it can be difficult to speak with Clarity around the extent to which no no no that we do know what the ideological pillars of our our president Republican party are they are just completely different than what we how we conceptualized and imagined the Republican party of old and understandably and reasonably there's there was not a desire to too quickly throw out a history even as I think even the leaders of this party had underestimated or or or or not correctly identified the extent to which they had lost the plot of what was going on right you know one of the things U one might say is that I'm not entirely sure when we have had a healthy two-party system or at least the question is healthy for whom you know Maga uh tries to evoke a past it's not in timeing you know we probably know when that was uh but political movements often talk about a kind of fantasy of a past that has somehow been disrupted undermined uh or so on and then when we go back to look at actually what this world was like it B no resemblance uh to the fantasy that's being laid out and I think we need to take you know a kind of hard look and at least not Embrace this idea which is you know is comforting in some ways if there was the if we had a healthy democracy recently um if we had liberal Democratic Norms that were robust then what we're looking at is kind of noxious weeds that are growing in a soil that's not fundamentally contaminated and the question is is the soil contaminated George Wallace ran for president for the first time in 1964 and he did well in the midwest he ran again in 68 and threatened really to turn the election into the House of Representatives and uh had he not uh been you know been the target of an assassination attempt in 72 it's not entirely because he'd already won a slew of primaries and finish second and others you know then we move back into the N you know to 1920s and the clan which was undoubtedly the largest social movement in the country that it had enormous political power at all levels of government and it was organized around I mean they believed in democracy too they believed in democracy for white Protestants who were native born and they thought that was an America that they were going to fight for so again I'm not trying to say it's all the same thing but I'm trying to say we need to be skeptical about the sort of story that we're being told because I think if you're interested in moving on to something better uh we need to you know look at what we're really up against but these are noxious I mean it is more you're not denying that I mean of course that these people are a different kettle of fish than John McCain yes okay um so um we all hear and probably maybe talk about and not along with the Des description of this election as the a kind of do or die moment that uh Trump and Maga represent an existential threat um that even extending sometimes to people who say uh well if he wins it's the last election overhead how uh I mean how much alarmism is too much alarmism do do you feel I mean uh in this in at this moment well I mean I I would say I mean I do think we could take Donald Trump at his objective word for what he intends to do if he's elected president um and I I feel you know and he has laid out horrifying plans that by any definition would be considered oppressive fascist and anti-democrat right and so I I think that there it is both true that we have seen that having lived through four years of a trump Administration um and now almost a decade of of the Trump era in American politics right we certainly have heard a lot of things that could be described as alarmism and there's certainly a fatigue that comes with that but what is true is that when someone runs for president you take the things they say seriously and the things that the former president is currently saying about what he would do in office are things that on their face threaten the very core of the democratic ideal and I think that that and I and I don't think it's alarmist to say that right I do believe that according to Donald Trump Donald Trump presents an existential threat to American democracy if you know it the the only thing I would add to that is I agree 100% with that the only thing I would say is that while Donald Trump is a problem so is any trump-like figure so that if perhaps he does not end up being the nominee in uh 20 24 uh anybody who adheres to the people and the principles that he has outlined is a problem it is not just one man it is a movement well I I am somewhat reassured by by my continuing belief that Donald Trump I couldn't agree with you more about he he is he he was the in his Evil Genius brilliant way was able to tap into what was there ahead of anyone else I think however repeating Trump for just any old person like say Ronda sandis it's he Donald Trump had all kinds of unique capacities having been a TV star for instance all all of it it's it's it's easier said than done to be the Trump replacement first of all yeah I'm just pointing out that that 2025 project is 30 of the leading uh radical right I know but you'd still need a candidate to be its cult figure vessel that's all I'm saying that's harder they've been around for a while but let me say ask you guys another question and you mentioned you know the the Reagan judge in the 1986 case who besid being a regular appointed judge ruled uh for you and for justice um again playing I guess Angels Advocate um uh we have seen the federal Judiciary and even leaving aside the Supreme Court for now but not necessarily we've seen them it seems to me as if we're looking for vessels of Hope and uh being having been a bullwark against trumpism whatever he says he wants to do and and and the the dictatorial fascistic things he says he's happy to say he wants to do we have a Judiciary uh can we not at least rely on them not collapsing under the the thrall of trumpism as elected Republicans have done so um so if Trump is elected in 2024 he does not need the Judiciary except as a rubber stamp but I do think your point is very interesting because the people who are on the Supreme Court understand that and the they I think it I think that will act as a check on what they are willing to rubber stamp between now and 2024 with the recognition that they might be deciding themselves out of relevance and relevance really matters to the people in the Supreme Court that's true Steve any any any glimmers of Hope at all before um you know um I mean I think Heather ra to really made a really interesting point one of the things we have to recognize is over the course of our history except maybe for 20 years the court has been an extremely conservative institution I mean think about Dread Scott think think about py v Ferguson think about you know not only on the Supreme Court but lower courts that made it impossible for working people to organize and may again since Trader Joe's is now about to bring a lawsuit U uh against the nlrb um you know I think the most immediate problem we may face is Trump's refusal to accept de feat I mean that's what we're looking at so that was cheery um well until they put us all in camps I'm still hopeful I want to well I think you should re I mean Heather has a very good take in her book about uh which is a more inspiring view based on abely a serious history and so I would pay attention to that age and not pay so much attention to me cuz I'm older anyway until 2024 yeah that's right um thank you all this was a total pleasure you thank you all