Bunkers Won't Save the Billionaires

Naomi Klein (0:01)

It's a fascism that is sort of embracing and accelerating the idea that it's all going down, and it's focused on the in-group surviving, being bunkered, so it's really a war over who's going to survive the future.

Jon Favreau (0:16)

I like the bunker mentality a lot.

Naomi Klein (0:17)

I think it explains a lot, I believe, that betting against Earth, against all of life, is a uniquely treasonous act. Their eagerness to escape this world, to escape this realm, is something we really need to look at.

Jon Favreau (0:34)

End Times Fascism, it seems to me like it's survival of the fittest, like politics sort of taken to the political extreme.

Naomi Klein (0:42)

We have developed something that we call the Stephen Miller Rule, which is if you wouldn't want something to end up in the hands of Stephen Miller, then it should not exist.

Jon Favreau (0:50)

Protect yourself, protect your kids, protect your family, your tribe, survive. You know, it's obviously an incredibly powerful human instinct. It is not inherently evil.

Naomi Klein (1:01)

We're not saying that it's wrong to prep, but the response has to be at getting at the root causes of the crisis and also coming up with credible plans for how we take care of everyone during a crisis, right, how we prep together. We are not built to handle crises of this scale all by ourselves with our phones.

Jon Favreau (1:21)

The first time Barack Obama ever mentioned Donald Trump in a speech was the first big one I wrote with him, 2005 commencement at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. He wanted to frame America's history as a choice between two competing stories, one where we act like we're all in this together and one where it's everyone for themselves.

SPEAKER_3 (1:39)

Obama called the latter social Darwinism, which he said is, It's especially tempting because each of us believes we will always be the winner in life's lottery, that we're the ones who will be the next Donald Trump, or at least we won't be the chump who Donald Trump says, You're fired.

Jon Favreau (1:57)

I've been thinking about how these competing stories have evolved over the last two decades, especially as we begin a debate next year about where America goes after Trump. When Obama gave that speech, there was still hope that globalization and technology would make the world feel smaller, that greater connection would reveal our dependence on one another and lead to more cooperation on problems that none of us could solve alone. Instead, we've lived through endless wars, a financial crisis, a pandemic, climate disasters, mass migration, and now the prospect of another technological upheaval, all of which have definitely made the world feel smaller, but also more unstable, uncontrollable, dangerous. When people feel threatened, the impulse to widen our circle of concern competes with a much older instinct, protect what's yours, look out for yourself, take care of your own.

That instinct is central to the story told by leaders in places as far-flung as Putin's Russia, Modi's India, Netanyahu's Israel, and of course here in Trump's America. Or perhaps its clearest articulation has come from the president's potential successor, JD. Vance. When he was asked last year about the government's immigration crackdown, the vice president invoked a Christian concept known as Ordo Amoris, which he said establishes a hierarchy of obligations.

J.D. Vance (3:13)

You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

Jon Favreau (3:25)

Vance's answer prompted a response from Pope Francis, who just months before his death, made it clear that he wasn't on the same page as the US government's highest ranking Catholic. Quote, love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. The true Ordo Amoris that must be promoted is that of the Good Samaritan. In that parable, a traveler is robbed, beaten and left for dead.

Members of his own religious community pass him by. The person who finally stops to help is a stranger, an outsider from a group he'd been taught not to trust. Not surprisingly, I'm with the Pope on this one. But I do think Vance is appealing to something real.

I don't know anyone who doesn't believe that we have special obligations to the people closest to us. I would do things for my kids that I wouldn't do for a stranger. I assume you would too for your family. The hard question isn't whether those obligations exist.

It's what happens when they collide with what we owe everyone else. Which brings me to the incredible essay that the journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones published last week. Nicole and her husband made a choice many years ago to send their daughter to a high poverty, mostly black public school in New York City. The kind of school wealthier families with options generally avoid. They made that choice because they believed families like theirs always escaped segregated, struggling schools, though schools would never improve. But their decision came with a cost for Nicole's daughter, who confronted her mother years later. You knew my school wasn't as good. You could have sent me somewhere better. Why didn't you? Which led Nicole to admit the hardest thing, that even though all the children in her daughter's school deserved better, her daughter was hers, and she had failed her. And even though her daughter finally got to choose a better, wealthier high school, the piece ends with a brutal truth that still hasn't changed. If every family with the means to do so rescues their children from failing public schools, other children will suffer. Countless other children who committed no sin other than being born poor in America. Politics is what we choose to do about that truth.