Please welcome George Packer, everybody.
(cheering, applause)
Thank you so much. Thank you for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Let's get straight into it.
You predicted the future.
I don't think that's true, actually.
I think you're being modest, because you did.
In your book and in your articles,
you were one of the few voices who kept sounding the alarm,
and you spoke about...
a white working class in America
who was frustrated at the idea that they were being ignored
by politicians.
So, a few years ago, I did a lot of reporting
in parts of the country that are now Trump central,
like western North Carolina
and the area around Youngstown, Ohio, Tampa Bay.
And what I found was a sense of...
uh, not just frustration, but utter disconnection
from what was going on in Washington,
-Yeah. -in New York, in Silicon Valley,
all the... power centers.
People felt they weren't heard,
they, uh, were despised
by the elites-- which is a word I heard often--
uh, that their children were not gonna have the future
that, uh... as good a future as they had had,
and that there was no more middle class,
it was disappearing in these places.
And none of that prepared me quite for Donald Trump,
but it did tell me that below the surface
there were these tectonic movements that were...
that were dangerous and that were gonna be...
rise up to the surface and be felt at some point.
You actually have an interview with Hillary Clinton recently,
and you spoke to her, and she said
that she didn't feel... I think the quote was
that they provided as clear a message
about how we see the economy as we need to.
And she was referring to the lack of a message
going to those voters.
Well, you know, her husband is remembered
as kind of a son of the white working class-- Bubba.
But really it was during his presidency
that the Democrats moved away from their traditional base
in the working class, moved away from the unions,
toward the embrace of globalization as the answer.
Bill Clinton gave a speech in 2000
saying the Internet will be the greatest engine
for ending poverty that we've ever seen in history.
It's interesting that you bring up those two points,
because it was also Bill Clinton--
during the campaign, I distinctly remember him
warning Hillary's campaign, saying, "Guys,
"you're not reaching out
"to these working class white voters.
These are the people who put me into office."
-And it seemed like he was dismissed. -He-he did.
He did, he said, you need to be in Wisconsin.
Are you in this precinct?
He-he knows politics down to the precinct level, even today.
But I think he was ignoring the fact
that it was partly through his presidency
that Democrats became the party of the professional class,
more and more, and left behind the un-- the uneducated,
the less educated, the working class,
who were shifting more and more to Republicans.
And today, those two completely switched parties.
We've had a, a huge transformation of our politics.
You talk about globalization,
and, um, I think it was just today,
uh, that President Obama made a speech where he said
that globalization needs to be course-corrected
because it feels like the gains
are all going to the top,
as opposed to everybody, where it was intended that they go.
You hear a lot of talk about globalization.
And what was interesting in-in one of your articles I read,
was a quote from someone from the campaign
who said they had never been to Flint.
They had never been to these areas that were struggling,
but they had been to areas in the world
where people are starving and struggling.
This was a very candid confession
from Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers,
saying, when we were in power in the '90s,
we didn't think about the Rust Belt,
about the working class losing jobs
in places like Youngstown and Flint.
-We thought about the inner cities, and Africa. -Yeah.
And those were the-the two focuses of concern
for who's being left behind.
In fact, the revenge of the white working class
has not just been in this country,
it's been across Europe.
I mean, I-I see Trump as bringing America closer
to European-style politics, 'cause he's right-wing populist,
like Berlusconi, like Marine Le Pen, like the Brexit voters,
uh, who is playing on ugly feelings in order to get power,
and to appeal to, sort of, the traditional voters
who feel that they've been left out.
How does that happen, though?
How do voters see Donald Trump as appealing?
A man who's a billionaire,
a man who has repeatedly not paid people for work,
a man who has found loopholes,
a man who has, uh, you know,
for lack of a better term, conned many people.
How do they see that person, and go,
that's the guy who's gonna help us.
I understand if people feel left behind,
but how do they think that's the man who's gonna help?
By ignoring everything that you just said.
I mean, by essentially tuning out all contrary information,
which is easy to do today, because Facebook and Twitter
don't force you to read things that you don't want to read.
They give you the things you want to read,
and they give you all news as being equal,
even if it's fake news from a right-wing website.
So I think it's easy for people to say,
oh, that's just doctored, that's not true.
Those are fake liberal facts
and we live in our separate worlds.
So they can ignore all that and say, Donald Trump
is someone I'd like to be, or someone who at least seems
to understand me, regardless of all the facts
about his past.
You speak about fake news and what we've come to see,
I mean, now Facebook and Twitter have taken action,
which is strange in terms of the timing.
But when you, when you look at how news has changed,
and that internet that became a machine,
there is very little curation now.
Nobody knows where anything comes from.
There is no accountability.
I wonder, going forward, because in your article,
you talk about how Nixon had a similar approach.
You talk about how, you know,
a leader like this can connect with the people,
and direct them in his vision.
And use the government to abuse power,
and-and to settle scores, which I see coming ahead.
That's very encouraging.
-Um... -(laughter)
But what-what frightens me even more,
is not the similarity between,
let's say a Nixon abusing government power,
and, or Donald Trump using that, you know,
abusing that government power,
but it's the idea that even if he were to be caught,
the American people who vote for him wouldn't care,
because, if Watergate were to be reported today,
then people would go, that's-that's not news.
This-this is an existential question
for people in my profession.
What we do, does it still matter?
Is anyone listening?
I mean, aside from your audience
and the subscribers to
and a bunch of other people,
can it break through these echo chambers
and actually persuade people of something
they didn't want to believe?
And, I mean, I have to hope and believe
that we're not so far gone that we can't, uh,
be appealed to by reason and by facts
and actually change our minds.
But right now it's a bleak time to be a journalist,
not just because there's a lot of financial pressure
but because there's the sense that facts no longer seem
to have that solidity, that power that they used to.
But there's gonna be a lot of work for journalists to do
during, uh, President Trump's administration.
A lot of work. And, uh, I'm glad to have you, uh,
as part of that pool. Thank you so much for your time.
-Thank you for having me. -Thank you for your words.