Adam J. Berinsky, "Political Rumors: Why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It" (Princeton UP, 2023)

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Welcome to the New Books Network.

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of New Books Network. This is your host, Morteza Hajizadeh from Critical Theory Channel. Today, I'm honored to be speaking with Dr. Adam Barinsky. Dr. Adam Barinsky is a professor of political studies at MIT University. He's here to talk with us about a recent book he has published with Princeton University Press. The book is called Political Rumors why We Accept Misinformation and How to Fight It. And it's a very timely topic to be discussing these days. Adam welcome to New Books Network.

Thank you for having me.

Before we start talking about the book, can you just very briefly introduce yourself and tell us how the idea of this book came to political rumors?

Yes. Great. So this book started actually about 15 years ago. I was I've been studying political behavior for 30 years now and I've seen lots of crazy things. But even given that the kind of politics in 2009, 2010 seemed really crazy to me. There were rumors going around that Barack Obama was not a citizen, not born in this country, therefore not eligible to be president. There were rumors that there were death panels that were going to decide whether or not people got health care that were written into the newly passed Affordable Care Act. And of course, there have been rumors that had been around for years about the origins of 911 and going back to the Kennedy assassination. So, for me, it was just sort of. It started off as something that was just curious, just trying to kind of figure out what was going on. And I will say that when I started this project, a lot of my friends question whether or not it was political science or not. I had just gotten tenure, so I was looking for something that I thought would be fun to do. And so I settled on this topic. Now, as you said, since then, it's pretty clear it's not only become political science, it's become central to politics. But it did start kind of as a lark. But then I just kind of kept metastasizing and growing.

So I guess you started working on that long, long before everybody was talking about misinformation, alternative truths, which I guess became trendy after Donald Trump's first time in the office. Can you give us, before we start talking about the. I'm really interested, first of all in the definition because, you know, we use these terms of political rumors, propaganda about. Not maybe propaganda, but, you know, misinformation, disinformation, if you could give us a definition. And I really, really enjoyed the allegory that you start the book with, the allegory of room, political room as being a pebble in a pond. Maybe you could start with that allegory and then give us that idea.

I think. Yeah, no, I think as you mentioned that around 2016, there's sort of a takeoff in the use of the terms misinformation, disinformation, fake news. You know, these are concepts that have been around for a very long time. And so when I started this project, I was interested in political rumors. And so there's two aspects to rumors that I was interested in. Right. The first is the social nature, which is sort of how they're transmitted by kind of word of mouth or word of Internet mouth, I guess, you know, as technology has developed. But also that, like, the terms misinformation have been used since that time. Thinking about, basically that they're based on unsupported claims. So basically they're accusations without evidence. And so for me, that was a really interesting thing to think about. The Combination of social transmission, but in the absence of supported evidence. So, I mean, I will say that if I were to write this, even if I was starting writing this book today, I probably would have titled it Political Misinformation or something along those lines. Because I think there's a lot of similarities there between what I was really interested in at the beginning, these political rumors and kind of what the focus of academia and the media has been on since then.

Right. And there has been a lot of interest more recently in debunking. In debunking, let's say, these. All these alternative truths and misinformation. And I guess I sometimes don't even know if it's worth it because those want to. People believe what they want to believe. But again, it's a worthwhile effort. And I sometimes talk to some. Some friends of mine who are like science promoters of science and say, look, there's a lot of conspiracy theories against science. What's the point? They have been around for centuries. The same thing with alternative truth or fake news. But why do you think it has been a lot of interest in that more recently, especially in the past few years? And if it's. Then how. What's the right way to tackle these conspiracy theories or political rumors, let's say?

Yeah, I mean, that's. That's a big question, I think. Let me start by thinking, you know, like, what's different today? Um, I think, you know, sort of when I talk about. Talk about my book, I often talk about sort of my experience growing up in New York city in the 1970s and 80s. You know, there were these. These rumors and stories, but they were disseminated by posters on the side of construction sites or, you know, sort of gossip among, you know, sort of folks at school or, you know, newsletters that you could write to that. I mean, these things have been around for a very long time, and they've been available for the people who are seeking them out. You know, that there's a whole. There was whole cottage industry in the 1960s and 70s on JFK assassination conspiracy theory. But I think what's different now and maybe kind of why there's more attention. It's not that rumors are more prevalent, but it's easier to see. So, for example, it's easier for people who believe these things to find each other. You don't need to go to a JFK conspiracy convention or get a newsletter from someone from across the country. You can find each other online. I think it's become, in a sense, easier for these People to find each other. And we see this with Internet chatboards about QAnon Pizzagate. I could go on and on. Um, but in addition to that, it's not just that these people can find each other, but this discussion can pervade a political conversation and even non political conversation beyond that. So in the book I talk a bit about the worry about what I call incidental exposure. Right, so you have people who are seeking out these conspiracies or people who are conspiratorially minded. They've always been around. You know, as you said, it's very hard to convince people to give up disbeliefs. But the problem is that if you have a lot of misinformation of unsubstantiated beliefs circulating around, you know, people who don't pay much attention to politics, and to be frank, that's most people that most people most of the time don't pay attention to politics. If they encounter these kinds of rumors, then it's something that can kind of penetrate their political consciousness. Right. So, for example, you know, it might be that I don't personally, you know, have an opinion on whether Obama was born in the US or not. But you know, if I have friends on Facebook or friends on, you know, sort of other social media platforms that are talking about it, even if I'm not seeking it out, it might come to me. So I think it's not that rumors are more prevalent than they were in the past. It's just that because it's easier for people to find each other to discuss those rumors, they might be sort of more prominent for the average American. And I should also say that I think the media itself plays a role in this, that, you know, so when rumors circulate, if mainstream media outlets pick that up as a story, then that can also spread it further. So I'm reminded in the summer of 2018 when QAnon, which is this kind of amalgam of anti. It's hard to say exactly what QAnon stands for, but you know, sort of a lot of conspiracy surrounding Democratic politicians. You know, this was circulating online for a while, but the, the New York Times ran a story about QAnon. So even if I'm not seeking that out, if I'm someone who reads the New York Times, I'm going to come across it. If I don't read the New York Times, maybe it'll get picked up by another outlet. So I'll see it that way. So, you know, I guess I would say is that just because more people seem to be talking about rumors doesn't mean that they are talking about rumors. It just means that that conversation is more visible in the Internet age.

And yeah, it was interesting that you mentioned Cuban Alex. I had absolutely no idea that even existed until I read, I guess, the same article in New York Times a few years ago during COVID Wow. Didn't know that this group existed. And it was just horrifying to me. And I've personally seen friends of mine, not friends, but yeah, people that I know who are not really interested in politics, but they're exposed to these ideas on social media and they're sort of apolitical people. But they come to believe that because it's on Twitter, there's an account, it has 100,000 followers, and they just send that stuff to me. I've told my friend, please stop sending that to me. It's not correct. But they're not really interested in delving deeper into the matters to be able to identify whether it's right or wrong. I have another question here. What I really liked the section of the book that you discuss about why people gravitate to certain political rumors and not all. It's not all of these political rumors that appeal to them. Can you tell us why is it that and what types of. Or what kinds of political rumors they tend to gravitate to? Yeah.

I'll tell you. I spend the first part of the book talking about trying to figure out who believes these kinds of rumors and why. And what I come to is that there's basically two main factors. The first factor is a personality factor. It's just that there's some people who are more likely to believe these fanciful stories than others. And the example I always give. Think about holidays that you go to. So Christmas or Hanukkah, the holiday time, Easter, Passover, you know, no matter your religion, Right. You come to a family gathering and there's always some relative there. Right. It's different for different people who has some crazy story that they had, you know, last year. So it could be your uncle who always has some story about how the government is involved in something, or a cousin. And so I think that, like, those are people on one end of the spectrum. On the other end of the spectrum are folks who reject all these stories. Right. And so there is this underlying tendency, you know, so I'm not a psychologist, I'm a political scientist, so I'm interested in really looking at the political aspect of it. But there's a lot of interesting work in psychology trying to distinguish These people. So you have those folks, you know, a spectrum, but there's also a political angle. And again, as a political scientist, where her it's where I come in is that, you know, people tend to believe stories, bad stories about the other side. Right. So if you're a Republican, you're more likely to accept rumors about Democrats. If you're a Democrat, you're more likely to accept rumors about Republicans. And these two things come together. So it's kind of the partisan angle where you stand depends on where you sit and the personality angle. So it's not all Republicans who think that Obama wasn't born in the U.S. but Republicans who score high in this conspiratorial thinking or this tendency to believe rumors are likely more likely to accept that there.

And you can you talk about your research method because you talk about how when you analyze the data between Democrats and Republicans, your conclusion is that the Republicans are more inclined to gravitate or to believe political rumors or conspiracy or you're going to spread them. But again, you say that it's not conclusive there. You can't conclusively say that's definitely the case. Can you talk about the research method on your findings there?

Yeah, I mean, I think this is a very important question. So in the United States, we know that Republican partisans or people who identify with the Republican Party are more likely to believe and spread misinformation than Democrats. So if we, if you just take a look at online activity, this is the case. So this is not, it's not my opinion. This is an empirical fact. And so the question is, what drives that? Right. Are Republicans more gullible or is it there's something in the communication flow, how politicians are talking about these rumors that could drive that. And so in the book, you know, I want to say we don't want to blame, so we're not blaming ordinary Republicans, the people who identify as the politicians, and how Republican politicians talk about these rumors compared to Democratic politicians. And so at the end of the day, it's not the people, it's the politicians, it's the elites that are really driving that. And so this is something that is true of the present day in the US but could be different in other countries. So I think, I mean, the problem is that there are politicians who have gained through the spread of rumors. And so, you know, if we say you shouldn't spread rumors, but there's a political advantage to doing so, then that's a really tricky place to be in.

And your research is in the context of the US and again, it's a very broad statement I'm making, and I'm happy to stand corrected because I have no evidence for that. But again, my feeling is that it's sort of true in other places as well. I live in Australia myself, and there's a Labor government now in place and a Liberal government. And liberals in Australia are the Conservative. They're not liberal at all. And the election is in about a month. But again, it's not as bad in terms of political rumors here as it is in the United States. But they do tend to spread a lot of fake news or unconfirmed news. The biggest one was a terrorist plot against a holy Jewish site, which was a few months ago. And they changed the rules regarding freedom of speech because of that plot. But then the police, the Australian Federal Police, announced that this was a hoax. It was not really the biggest terrorist plot against the. The Jewish community, but again, it was used. And the Liberal government here, which was the Conservative Liberal Party, quickly jumped on board and spread the news. The media picked it up and everybody believed that, including me, for about two months until the Federal Police came out and said, no, this was not really a plot in that sense. So I guess more conservative politicians everywhere in the world might gravitate more towards full political gains again. And you mentioned that we are more exposed to all these rumors. We have more access to it through family conversations, social media. Open it, it's there. Even newspapers, even politicians these days are spreading them. But what effective strategies do we have as people, ordinary people, to combat the spread of political rumors?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question, and I don't have a great answer for that. So, you know the title of the book, you know, political Rumors. Why believe? Why believe what? We can combat that? I say, well, you know, I can say a lot more about that first part than the second part. So, you know, a story I tell about my book, this is not fake News is I started in 2010, in 2012, I signed a book contract with Princeton Press saying I would deliver the book in 2014. Um, as you can see from the, you know, the copyright date, it didn't come out till 2023. And in large part, that was because it was a lot harder to find these kinds of solutions than I thought it would be. And, you know, I think that for a time there was hope that not just me, but other scholars could find a magic bullet that could slay misinformation. Right. So if only you do this, this one thing, we can stop that now, over time, it's become clear that this is a really hard problem. So when I talk to different groups, I've talked to groups of doctors, tech companies, politicians, I always say, I know you brought me here because you want me to say, here's the three easy things you could do to fix your misinformation problem. And I say, I'm not going to do that because there are no easy solutions. And anyone who says that there are is the American term snake oil salesman. I don't know if that translates right? But basically someone who's peddling, you know, stuff that just doesn't work. And so what I think is, is that we need to be creative about solutions, right? Thinking about how we can combat them. Now, in the book, I talk about one preferred solution. I talk about basically separating out the message from the messenger. So let me kind of take a minute to kind of deconstruct that. Is that, you know, sort of that. When I started the project, my thought was like, okay, if I can just counteract false beliefs with truth, then I can correct that and we can move on to the next thing. And so, yeah, in this case, thinking about the role of fact checkers, right? So fact checkers are independent journalists or other trained professionals who look at the base of evidence and say, you know, this is supported and this isn't. And so the idea is these are the people who should be deciding not saying it's true or false, but whether or not it's supported by the publicly available evidence. Now, the thought is that because these are neutral, unbiased people, that that would be the best person to deliver the message, that it would be have the most weight over time, however, right? So, you know, if I tell you that you believe something that's wrong and I tell you what the truth is, you can either change your view of what the truth is or you can change your view of me, right? And so with fact checkers, I think what happens is that eventually, you know, conservatives in this country say like, I don't like what they're saying. So I'm just not going to believe it. It's just, you know, liberal garbage. And so rejecting the fact checkers. And so what I talk about in the book is the need to have a different messenger, so being creative about who delivers the message, right? So you still want to have the experts who are determining whether or not something is supported by the evidence. You know, just like we want to have scientists weighing in on the, the issue of the efficacy of different vaccines or medical treatments, but we don't necessarily want those people saying, like, oh, here's what you should do. So, you know, in the case of vaccines around the COVID crisis, there was some talk about, like, who do you have the message saying this is important? So you could have doctors saying it's important, or pharmaceutical companies, but people who are skeptical would say, like, oh, you're just in the pocket of big pharma, right? You're just saying it's because you're getting paid. I don't believe you. Better to have local community leaders, right? Folks who are trusted in the community say that this is good for public health. So a similar sort of thing with political rumors is you could have authorities that are trusted for other reasons. Or even better, you can have people speaking against their apparent political interests, right? So in the case of death panels I mentioned before, there were not in the Affordable Care act any provisions about ways to end your life sooner, right? There were instead having discussions with your doctor about end of life concerns. So think about basically living wells, that sort of thing. But it became twisted into this, oh, the government's been a ration. Ration healthcare. And so, right, we're coming after grandma. And so the best person to debunk that wasn't necessarily the sort of the Democratic Party, the people who are pushing for this healthcare reform. It wasn't the American Medical association, the independent doctors. The most effective person to deliver that message, I found, were Republican politicians, right? So people speaking against their apparent political interest to say, like, hey, you might have heard this, this just isn't true. And so, you know, I don't want people to take from. And I've had this, you know, sort of talking to different groups about strategies that the key insight isn't that you want to have Republican politicians speaking against their parent interest. The key insight is that the person who is best able to judge whether or not a claim is supported, supported is not necessarily the best person to deliver that message. So figure out, you know, what is. What is the truth? And by truth, I mean what is supported by the publicly available evidence. Come to that, and then figure out a strategy. Who's the best person to deliver that message to your target audience? I will say, go ahead, please. I just want to say that, you know, and so what I found is that there are some effects, but it doesn't always work. Right? It's not a magic bullet. And so I think the other thing I would say is that's my preferred solution. But there's lots of other folks who are working on similar strategies. I Think the thing to do is to figure out how to combine these. Right. Rather than saying it's my strategy, this kind of trusted sources or pre bunking, which is other people have, have put forward, like basically training people how to, how to engage with new information. Why not both. Right. And seeing can we combine these measures somehow.

And I really like that idea of being creative because we often think that if we confront people with facts, they'll easily convince, which is not really the case. And I've done a few podcasts on vaccine hesitancy and that's what most of the people I spoke with say that it's, it's doctors need to come out rather than as you mentioned, like government representatives or representatives, those big industries. And they need to approach people sympathetically because sometimes maybe the source of the rumor is not really lack of information, but maybe it's disenchantment with the political status, with the status quo. So then you need to approach them and kind of sympathetically without really insulting their intelligence. Because that's. We tend to, and I've been guilty of that myself, we tend to think these people are ignorant and they're gullible. But that's not how you can really combat political rumors. And I think in your. It's a perfect segue to my next question. In your, like the strategies that you lay out, there's also heavy burden on citizens rather than politicians because we tend to think that it's politicians who are responsible for combating political rumors, but citizens have an equally important role, if not more important. Am I right?

Yeah, I think it's a combination of the two. Right. So we can think about, you know, so I'm, I'm a social scientist who focuses on mass political behavior. So the kinds of things I'm looking about are like, how do ordinary people respond to new information? What can we do to have effective strategies to deliver that information? So that's one side of the coin. And then the other side of the coin is something I alluded to earlier. Thinking about the politicians who are spreading the sort of the misinformation. And so I think like an effective strategy needs to focus both on the reception side, which is what my work does by sort of like that's how I've been trained. That's how I think. But we also want to look at the supply side that I think if we're going to make any headway on this larger problem, I think that we really need to address it at the source. So thinking about the politicians who are spreading stories, so there's things that we can do at the individual level to kind of help. But we're not going to get a complete solution unless we also kind of focus on the fact that the information that's coming into the system that's being pushed by certain politicians is bad. So I think what I would say is that they're both really important, focusing on both sides of that, both the reception and the dissemination.

And. May I? There's this term used, elite rumor. The question has two parts. What is it? And is it justifiable for political leaders to use rumors or elite rumors to advance politics or the party politics?

Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I use the term elites, and I mean, that's a sort of. This is a political science term. You know, it's sort of. You know, sometimes I realize the language I use is, you know, I sort of. I speak English, but I also speak political science. Right. And so when I talk about elites, what I mean are party leaders could also be leaders in the media, interest group leaders. So basically, people with megaphones. So these are the people who are able to disseminate political rhetoric. So it could be politicians running for office, it could be folks with podcasts who have a large audience. And in this case, we really want to focus on that side. Um, the question, you know, is it right for them to use it for their political advantage? I would say, you know, that's. What would I say? I would say it. It's not, you know, sort of spreading unsupported claims or claims that are directly contradicted by publicly available evidence is irresponsible. Yeah. So I think, you know, a good way to think about this is that, you know, whenever I teach politics, public opinion, either to undergrads or different groups, I always start by saying, you know, you're here, meaning my students or the people in the audience because you care about politics. Right. You are willing to listen, willing to take a class from a political scientist who's going to tell you about the political. Political life. And what I say is, you're weird. Like, most of the people most of the time don't care about politics and don't want to be bothered with politics. So, you know, election comes around, figure out how to support. But, you know, that for most people, you know, sort of politics is a sideshow in the stage of life, which makes a lot of sense. Right. It's not, I like politics. I'm a political scientist. I'm a political junkie. I always have been. But other people have other interests. And so we often say the sign of a well functioning democracy is that you don't need to think about politics all the time. Right? And so I just want to say that, no, I'm saying most people don't think about politics. That's not saying that's a bad thing, right? That's a sign of a well functioning thing. But what it does mean is that if most people most of the time don't pay attention to politics, that puts a lot of responsibility on political leaders to kind of do the right thing, right? So, you know, it's perfectly rational for me to say, you know, I'm not going to invest in all these different political issues. Instead I'm going to figure out, you know, my, my team, right? Am I a Republican or I'm a Democrat and trust that the politicians who share my values, who share my principles are going to make decisions that are aligned with that and aren't going to try to mislead me. And so, you know, what I would say is, you know, it might be an effective political strategy, but it's very detrimental to representative democracy. Right? And thinking about, you know, I mean, but, but there's the rub too, right? Because politicians who spread mistruths can, it can work to their advantage, but it can also be detrimental to the system, which is I think, a lot of what we've seen in American politics over the last decade or so.

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And final question that I have is, given the political landscape these days, and you know, the market for political rumors or alternative truths is quite hot, how can we. And it has an impact on democracy. And that's something that you Also discuss in the book, so what is the impact of these political rumors on the political. Sorry, on democracies and how can we safeguard democracies? I think there's no denying that democracies are in decline everywhere in the world. And it's really worrying that even liberal this is happening to a lot of Western countries where there's more or less a working liberal democracy. So how do you see the political landscape of the US in the next few years? And how can we save democracies from these rumors?

Yeah, well, you know, I, I, another thing I often tell my audiences is like, I don't have a lot of happy stories, right? And so, you know, I'm, I'm not gonna. So this question, how do we save democracy? Or I think the first thing is to recognize that there are problems, right? And to recognize that, you know, sort of that a political discourse where people trade in these unsupported claims or, you know, things. So, you know, we think about, like death panels. I talked about, about part of this healthcare reform. You know, on the one hand you could say, well, it's ridiculous that who would think that the government's coming for grandma, right? But if you're a person who hears these stories and you believe them, you're not going to be trusting of the government's involvement in health care, which means you're not going to be trusting of the government, which means that you will reject government involvement in a wide variety of things. So these stories are, these rumors are kind of fanciful and farcical, but they have real political consequences. So I think recognizing that, I think is an important first step in thinking about how we can give citizens the tools that they need to, to engage with political discourse. Right. In a situation in which they're not engaging with politics on a regular basis is really important, I think, also developing strategies for spreading messages and not to think, you know, I think as we were talking about before, the, you know, you just think like, oh, you have misinformation. Here's a fact, now we're cured. We'll move on to the next thing, right? That just spreading true information or supported information or again, claims that are underlined by publicly available evidence isn't enough, that we need to be creative about how we spread these messages. And by we, I mean the kinds of people who are interested in preserving democracy and preserving a healthy information environment. But to recognize that there are bad actors there. And I think, you know, this is the really hard question is how do you get politicians to stop deploying rumors when Politically, it's advantageous for them to do so. Right. So good for them, a good strategy, meaning they're more likely to get what they want. Different policies, winning reelection, but bad for democracy. And so that's the really hard question is that the things I talk about, we can kind of tweak at the margins, but how we can kind of change the, the path of politicians? Well, I don't know. I'm consistently surprised by American politics. I think politics all over the world, what happened in the UK around Brexit, too, is a very similar sort of process there. That this is happening all over the world is that politicians are discovering that spreading unsupported claims can be an effective strategy, an effective political strategy. And in the face of that, we need to think, well, how can we prevent that? And so I think a lot of it is political culture. So I'm always amazed by each of what's, as I said, very amazed by what's happening in American politics. I grew up in New York, as I mentioned before, in the 1970s and 80s, Donald Trump was the central figure there. And, you know, he was the Donald Trump of today is the Donald Trump of then. You know, always sort of saying things and looking for press and sort of making unsupported claims to be kind, you know, but if you had asked me in 2012, like, let's say there was a politician who came out and said something and then denied saying it, and you could roll videotape afterwards showing that they had said it, what would happen to that politician? And I would say, or their career would be over. But in 2016, Donald Trump, he made the claim. He said, oh, global warming is a Chinese hoax. And then he was confronted with this. They said, well, I never said that, but then you could roll videotape of him. I'm showing my age by calling it videotaper. But you can roll a clip of him saying that very same thing. And I just would assume, like, that would be the end of the career. Or, you know, again with, with Trump and the, the Access Hollywood tape where, you know, he was. He was on tape, you know, saying things that would end any other politician's career. And you could see this in how Republican politicians were talking about that afterwards, sort of like, well, we don't know what's going to happen. You know, I would have guessed that the politician would have dropped out and we'd be onto the next thing. Just as, you know, sex scandals derailed Gary Hart in an area in an earlier era, but turns out he didn't you know, he just was like, oh, we're going ahead. And so, you know, it turns out a lot of these things that we thought would happen were based on norms of conduct that it, it just appears that politicians don't necessarily follow. Um, and so I don't know. And so, you know, what's the solution is we need better behaved politicians. How can we get that? Like, I, I don't know. That's a really hard question.

And I guess, yeah, it's, I, when I always ask this question at the end of the interview and I rarely get a very positive answer, which is, which is, which makes sense. Yeah, there's, there are a few positive things to look forward to in political landscape. And unfortunately it's not only, and it's a global fact. It's not only limited to what's happening in the US it's going around everywhere in the world. And as you mentioned a few years ago, such blunders would be the end of a political career. But I guess a lot of politicians, even worldwide, are being inspired by the examples of Trump and they're deliberately spreading misinformation or making outrageous statements, knowing that there is an angry, disenchanted group of people who like these statements. But yeah, and I'm guessing it's still the role of citizen, being involved in democracies, being involved in the political process and being informed about that helps. And I did speak with someone who said democracy is not easy. It's a full time job. We need participants, participatory democracy, we need citizens to be involved. And let's just hope that things will get better soon everywhere in the world.

Yes. Yeah. So maybe here's a slightly happy note I guess to end on is when I think about not only am I American political scientists, I study American politics. I think a lot about American political history. And so when people ask me, it's like, is there anything hopeful? I said, you know, if I want to feel a little better. I read late 19th century American history. So this was after the Civil War, after Reconstruction, where, you know, where former slaves were given rights. And then the federal government pulled out of the south and it became an autocracy again. And you had robber barons who are racking up huge fortunes and you had the Native American population being decimated. So all sorts of bad things were happening at the end of the 19th century, and then things got better. Right. And so, you know, history is not necessarily a rise in decline. So I don't know what's going to change that. But, you know, maybe it won't be in my lifetime. But, you know, I don't think. I don't think that we're necessarily on a path toward the end of democracy or autocracy. But, you know, no matter what, it's going to be a bumpy road for a while.

Yeah. Dr. Adam Berniski, thank you very much for taking the time to talk.

My pleasure. Yeah. Talk with us.

New Books. New Books Network. Hope to be able to speak with you about your future works as well.

Yes. Great. Well, hopefully in the future I'll have happier stories and better solutions. But thank you very much. Thank you so much. My pleasure. Welcome to the New Books Network.