Adam Tooze

Okay.

All right.

Try making a show like this in Russia.

Yeah.

At the limit, clearly, there are huge differences in the world and they're still extremely meaningful and absolutely worth fighting for.

And we still, at this very moment, are the beneficiaries and the game is not done and midterms are coming up and these people are wrong about so many of their hypotheses.

Is there a pure, clearly defined, do we still know what freedom is?

All of that, I agree, is kind of out the window.

But I mean, really, it would be self-indulgent to deny the huge differences, which are still very real.

It's conceivable a time might come where those differences get erased, but we are not there

There's everything to play for, and presumably all of us engaged in this conversation think that's why we need to talk.

We need to talk publicly.

We need to make people laugh.

We need to make people think.

We need to engage with these questions because this is so not done.

I mean, we went back and forth on this a minute ago.

It's worth saying there's one really depressing thing going on, which is that people are leaving before Trump gets here.

which is another way of responding to this border, which is to say, no, I don't have to sit on the edge of this.

I don't want to be part of the spectacle.

I don't want to be dragged into this.