Sam Harris

and who's obviously not a good person, right?

Obviously doesn't care about people, can't even pretend to care about people really, right, in a credible way.

And so, I mean, if there's a silver lining to this, it's along the lines you just sketched, it shows us how vulnerable our system is to a truly brilliant and sinister figure, right?

I mean, like I think we are, we really dodged a bullet.

Yes, someone far more competent and conniving and ideological could have exploited our system

in a way that Trump didn't.

Yeah, so if we plug those holes eventually, that would be a good thing and he would have done a good thing for our society, right?

I mean, one of the things we realized, and I think nobody knew, I mean, I certainly didn't know it and I didn't hear anyone talk about it,

is how much our system relies on norms rather than laws.

Yeah, civility almost.

Yeah, it's quite possible that he never did anything illegal, truly illegal.

I think he probably did a few illegal things, but like illegal such that he really should be thrown in jail for it.

At least that remains to be seen.

So all of the chaos, all of the, you know, all of the diminishment of our stature in the world, all of the, just the opportunity costs of spending years focused on nonsense, all that was just norm violations.

All that was just, that was just all a matter of not saying the thing you should say.

But that doesn't mean they're insignificant, right?

It's not that, it's like, it's not illegal for a sitting president to say, no, I'm not going to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, right?

We'll wait and see whether I win.

If I win, it was, the election was valid.

If I lose, it was fraudulent, right?