John Ganz

Vance is deeply wounded by the kind of

entry into America's elite that he had, which is that he's a bright guy.

He went to Yale, but he comes from this underprivileged background.

And I think he, like Richard Nixon before him, who was a bright guy, but really resented elites and their condescension towards him.

I think that he really has a chip on his shoulder about that.

I thought you said Bob Costas for a second.

One knock you could make on Girard in general and his approach to religion and a lot of conservatives' approach to religion, quite frankly, is that no doubt many of them are sincere, of course, but they usually relate to religion as some kind of social or psychological necessity.

And that's not quite the same as believing, right?

If you say, well, it's better for society if we do that, that's not quite saying I believe anything.

in the literal truth that, you know, of this religion and that, you know, God is communicating through its representatives, it's something much more utilitarian.

So I think that Girard's philosophy is an entry point for people who's

viewpoint on the world is fundamentally not one of faith it's one of reason and this seems to be a rational picture of the world and how it works and why people are competitive what gerard is right about is that being involved in these social competitions and desiring what others want and being in these mimetic basically love triangles is extremely painful and it's very difficult to feel like you've accomplished you know very much because there's always this

endless regress of, Oh, this person has something I want.

So the appeal of religion then is it seems that Gerard said, well, you know, instead of imitating others, imitate Christ.

And, you know, he was the only person not infected by this.

And yeah, I can understand, you know, the pains of living in a competitive society.

One would want to escape that and take a more contemplative stance towards it.

It seems to me that,

that these fellows have a very utilitarian, almost cynical relationship to religion that is not one of deep feeling.

I don't know.