Kirk Kirkpatrick on the American Political Moment

*The interview was conducted on February 8, 2024.*

Kirk Kirkpatrick scored at 185 (S.D. 15), near the top of the listing, on a mainstream IQ test, the Stanford-Binet. He is the CEO of international telecommunications firm MDS America Inc. Here we talk about the American political moment.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Okay, so we are back with Kirk Kirkpatrick after a couple or few years’ interlude. I wanted to get your take on the current American political situation. What do you think is the current context of knowing what will happen next for Americans? I think that is a nice lead-in to this.

Kirk Kirkpatrick: The problem with knowing what happens next is making these predictions. You need to have data. You need to have data that you can calculate. But the problem in the U.S. right now is that a large part of the United States is not dealing with reality, with what is real. So, it is hard to predict if you start dealing with imaginative, imaginary things because you can’t know what somebody will imagine next. I think your problem in the U.S. is probably an extension of what Rick and I discussed earlier. In that, you have a lot of people looking at a lot of information and don’t have either a means or a motivation to validate the information that they’re looking at, so they get a piece of information, and if they like it, they believe it no matter how unreal or implausible it seems. That’s a problem. Because if you are not dealing with reality, you have a big problem. I think a lot of people know this right now. But predicting where it is going to go, I haven’t the slightest idea.

Jacobsen: It does help give a bit of grounding. For the first part of that response, one thing came to mind: What concepts or fantasies are Americans most wrapped up in now, if they are even now?

Kirkpatrick: There are a number of them. It is not all Americans. For example, let me give you some good examples: if you look at the last election, you had an election where a popular vote did not elect Donald Trump. He won in an electoral college vote. He lost the popular vote. His disapproval rating or what people thought about him as a president. His negative rating never dipped below 50%. The entire time he was President. So, if you are an alien looking at American politics from 1,000 miles up, the first question you would probably ask is, “How could this guy ever expect to be re-elected?” Since he was one of the least popular presidents who mishandled the COVID-19 problem, how could he expect to be elected?

Yet, when he comes out and says, “They stole the election.” You have many people who will just suspend their disbelief and just believe it anyway. The economy right now is booming. We are doing better than most of the OECD countries. The reporting on it, until recently, has been lukewarm at best. You have people who imagine Biden is too old to be President, which may be true. But the man running against him is four years younger than him. At 81 or 80, the difference between 77 and 81 is not very great. So, in order to be sitting there, “I might vote for Trump because Biden is too old.” That’s not rational. They’re both old. So, we have reached the point where – I shouldn’t say, “We” – many Americans have gotten to the point where they’re not looking to inform. They are looking to confirm. They have a belief. They think something is a certain way. They want to confirm this, one way or the other. The sad part is you are seeing it spill over in foreign policy and many other things to the point where we are not dealing with facts anymore. The way I would explain it in an off-kilter way. I used to explain to the Germans and the French. One of the problems of competing with the Americans is “we’re you.” So, if you have a group of Germans, they tend to all be German and think like Germans.

As Americans, you could have a German on the team with you or someone of German descent. So, you got to this thing in World War II called the “Yankee ingenuity.” They took the ideology out of it and just solved the problem. We have become ideological animals in the last 20 years to the point where we are living on ideology rather than what is real, to the point that I went to Russia to hire my chief engineer, probably in 2005. This person was a man who grew up in the Soviet Union and had been educated in the Soviet Union. I hired him when I was working in Moscow. I hired him to bring him here to the U.S. After living here for about five years, this was probably about 2011 or something. He came to me and said, “Kirk, you know, an observation is when I grew up in the old Soviet Union. We knew our propaganda was bullshit. You believe yours. You believe your propaganda.” You can see that illustrated in going to the street and asking somebody.

“Is America the greatest country on Earth?” A rational person would probably say something like, “By what criteria are you defining ‘greatest country,’ What does this mean?” but many Americans would answer that question with “Yes.” Okay? Then you ask them, “Have you ever been outside the U.S.?” “No.” Do you see the fundamental disconnect in this question? “I believe America is the greatest country on earth.” Okay, “Have you been anywhere else?” “No.” So, where does the belief come from faith? This belief in rational thinking is killing us. It is going to kill us, as it does anybody else.

Here is a question I could ask you, Scott: Many people are worried about the “open border.” Our open border is pretty strong if you have crossed any international borders. I believe you are Canadian, right?

Jacobsen: I am Canadian.

Kirkpatrick: So, travelling to Canada, the border is not as intense as it is in Mexico. My question is better placed if we think through history. What societies have been destroyed by immigrants? What societies have we seen fall or damaged because they took in too many immigrants? Compare that with the number of societies that have fallen because they were run by xenophobes, like Hitler’s, for example.

Jacobsen: They implode.

Kirkpatrick: They implode, right? The United States’s strength was that it took in people from everywhere. It adapted them to become American. They didn’t become “American.” They have been Italian American. They bring new ideas to the table. They might have been German, Mexican American, or African American. They bring new ideas. They are not thinking like the other guy, okay? That is a positive thing. It is not a negative thing. So, my only point is that I am not advocating one way or another on that problem. I am saying, “If you take a step back and look at the rational aspect of this, it’s hard to scream about closing the borders. You may want to regulate them more, and so on. Here is another perfect example: Are you familiar with Matthew 25:36? Are you familiar with this? This is a story in the Bible that Jesus tells. It is in the Gospels. He is talking about – I believe the Bible parable is ‘the sheep and the goats’ – basically, the story is the end of time, and Jesus is judging people. He separates the people on the left and the right. He tells them. You people on my right side. You came and visited me when I was sick. I was a stranger. You let me in. I was in prison. You came to visit me. I was hungry. And you fed me. Of course, they responded, “Lord, when did we ever feed you and visit you in prison?” I don’t remember you being a stranger and letting you in.” Jesus responds to them, “These things that you did to the least of them. You also do unto me. So go into Heaven and receive your reward.” Then he turns to the other people and says, “Now, you people, I was a stranger. You wouldn’t let me in. I was hungry. You wouldn’t feed me. I was thirsty. You didn’t give me anything to drink. I needed clothing. You didn’t give me any clothing.” Of course, they say, “When did we deny you all this, Jesus?” he said, “That which you didn’t do to the least of them. You didn’t also do to me. So, now, depart into the Hell that God has prepared for the Devil and his angels; I don’t know you.”Now, if you’re an Evangelical who knows the Bible, this should not align you with present-day Republican thought. So, “I was a stranger, and you would not let me in.” Uh, guys? This one is pretty straight. Jesus never mentioned abortion. But he did talk about this. I find it hard to believe that Evangelicals don’t know this story. So, this is a problem. When you’re not dealing with reality but with what you want reality to be like, it is a problem.

Jacobsen: Based on it, do you think the central issue among Americans, bipartisan wise, is confirmation bias? Coming to the forward, that is a source of many of these issues.

Kirkpatrick: Yes, one of my principles of politics is that all politicians lie. But politicians tend to lie when the truth doesn’t work. Do you understand what I mean? So, for example, if the Republicans want to cut taxes in the United States, if they complain about taxes, the U.S. has one of the lowest tax burdens in the industrialized world. You are Canadian. You should understand this. In order to say that we’re overtaxed, you have to lie. Okay? If the Democrats wanted to raise taxes, they don’t need to lie. It is not like they wouldn’t lie if they needed to, but they don’t need to because they can point out that we have the lowest taxes in the OECD. So, I don’t need to lie about this, if you know what I mean.

Jacobsen: I do.

Kirkpatrick: When John Kennedy was the President, the highest income tax bracket in the U.S. was 92%. So, at that point, if you want to lower income taxes on the wealthy, you probably don’t have to be deceptive about it. You can just say, “We have a 92% interest rate on our wealthiest Americans, which is onerous.” There is no need to lie. The problem has come, if you look, Scott. Let me ask you a question as the interviewer.

Jacobsen: Sure.

Kirkpatrick: Can you name a country run like the Republicans would want to run the U.S.? So, low taxes, libertarian type, open gun laws, no abortion- the ideas that you see when you tune into one of the right-wing television channels- free market healthcare, and a small or diminished welfare system- what country would fit this description?

Jacobsen: Without even those policy recommendations in particular, but if looking at the outcomes that would be likely, take Healthcare, for instance, with abortion or privatized healthcare system, those would reduce the quality of life in the short and the long term of society. It would be a much higher cost rather than a benefit…

Kirkpatrick: …that’s the effect. My question is, “What country can you reach out to today and say, ‘That is like it is going to run it if the Republicans run it.’?”

Jacobsen: On all of those, it would be a fantasy country as far as I know.

Kirkpatrick: It doesn’t exist. Here’s my point: I live in the state of Florida. I live in the state of Florida. The governor of Florida calls the state of Florida, where Wake comes to die. Very much, every time he gets up there. He talks about woke. So, my obvious question to him is, “Governor DeSantis, where else does he go to die?” Let me assist you; it goes to Iran. It goes to Russia. They don’t tolerate woke in Russia. They don’t tolerate it in Uganda. You aren’t going to be woke in Uganda or Saudi Arabia. They won’t take that. They won’t stand for it. They’re going to arrest you, put you down, whatever. Is this a group you want to belong to because you can probably be woke in Sweden or Austria, which are nice places to live? It is a nice place, Germany. My whole point here is: If you take a look at, if I stand back – and, of course, most Americans have never been anywhere, but if I stand back – and start thinking about the United States moving to the left. We have become more like Canada. Which is not a bad place to live; we don’t move from where we’re at to Venezuela by moving a little bit to the left. We must go through Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Sweden. All of these other places were long before we reached Venezuela. But if the U.S. moves to the right, what is the next country to the right of us? It is nothing that is a developed country. There are no developed countries with the same political rights as the United States except, maybe, Hungary. Even Hungary, I am not sure I would put it there.

Jacobsen: Orban is not a very pleasant character. I have interviewed one of the – I guess you could say – political people or secularists active there. He has been hounded for years. He is currently in lawsuits. The quality of the country has declined since he has been elected – since Orban has been elected, according to this person who is living there, Gaspar Bekes.

Kirkpatrick: Yes, you’re right. It has gone downhill. They have, for example, Universal Healthcare (Hungary has), which most people here would consider a left-wing idea.

Jacobsen: Certainly, Gordon Guyatt is an epidemiologist at McMaster University. As far as I know, he is Canada’s most cited person ever. He was the co-founder of Evidence-Based Medicine. I think in 1991. His co-founder may be deceased. In his analysis in interviews with him, he draws it down to what he calls Values and Preferences. The simple version is that the values and preferences of Americans regarding healthcare are towards autonomy, and most of the other countries with a similar quality of life are towards equity. So, the American phenomenon of Healthcare, for instance, on one issue, is very much an outlier. However, the inefficiency is probably about a magnitude of 4 because it is twice the cost at half the outcomes.

Kirkpatrick: As a Canadian, do you know the show The Greatest Canadian?

Jacobsen: [Laughing] I am aware of it. I do not own a television. I haven’t had much time to watch it or associated things.

Kirkpatrick: It was only one season. Basically, they went through Canada’s history and wanted people to vote on the greatest Canadian in history.

Jacobsen: It was, probably, Tommy Douglas.

Kirkpatrick: What?

Jacobsen: Was it Tommy Douglas?

Kirkpatrick: I love the way you said it. You said, ‘It was Tommy Douglas.’ Terry Fox came in number two, strangely enough.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kirkpatrick: Most Americans wouldn’t know who Tommy Douglas was, but how do Americans discuss healthcare with those who tell me how bad the Canadian healthcare system is?

Jacobsen: They don’t know better.

Kirkpatrick: This is my point. My point is: Guys, listen, the Canadians are glued to the United States. Of all foreigners, they know the U.S. better than anybody because they are right here. More than this, if I were to knock you out in the U.S. and wake you up in Canada when you looked around, you’d still think you were in the U.S. Unless you saw a gas station.

Jacobsen: You might not necessarily because it depends on the reason; you’re knocked out. In Canada, you would, at least, wake up in a hospital bed.

Kirkpatrick: [Laughing] Exactly. My point is that these people know our system. They know theirs. They selected the guy who created their system as the greatest Canadian in history. Do you think they had a bad system? It is amazing.

Jacobsen: That is a bit of a Northern reference frame to Americans. What about the South, Mexico, and Latin American countries? How are they looking at the current political situation in the United States? How does it affect them? How do they view it in general?

Kirkpatrick: No, I have to defer to what I call the American Disease again. Scott, I don’t have any information about it. I will not form an opinion about it. I know Europeans. I know the Middle East. I know the Far East to a certain extent. I don’t speak Spanish. I do speak German, French, Dutch, and Chinese. So I can evaluate these places. But in Mexico and these places, I’m a news watcher. But more important is how the rest of the developed world looks at us.

Jacobsen: That is an important distinction. It is a good point.

Kirkpatrick: The reason is, these people in the developed world. I don’t know a better way to say it. I’ll say it with an analogy. When I first left the U.S., I went to Germany. I was blown away by how similar Germany was to the United States. I was expecting a foreign country to radically differ from where I lived. But it was the same with tweaks. There were fewer Fords and more Mercedes. Stuff like the houses looked a little different. Things like this. Then, I went to the communist world while it was still communist, and I found the environment I was expecting in Germany. Nothing looked similar, if you understand what I mean. So, for me, the developed countries are the ones who identify with our lifestyle. When I look at somebody living in Khartoum, their main drive is making sure “I have enough to do today.” Instead of paying off my second car for somebody in Canada or the U.S., I like to keep the comparisons as much as possible within those countries. But the sad part for me is that you have been watching what is happening in Germany.

Jacobsen: I can go check right now. I have been in a work and a home transition.

Kirkpatrick: Let me give you a short breakdown; they have a party called the AfD, the Party for Germany. It is, basically, a far-right party. But they’ve been significant ground among the German electorate. Enough so that it was becoming scary; they were getting to be the biggest party in certain local elections. Then, they had a meeting with some ultra-right wingers. It was recorded. It slipped out. It got out into the media. The AfD, even some people from the CDU, which would be the German republicans, were recorded at this white nationalist meeting talking about re-immigration, meaning taking people who had already been admitted into the country and given permission to live there to make them go back and then try to get back – deporting them and then getting them to attempt it a second time. When this came out, there was a big stink. They called for a protest against it. The protest was huge. There were a lot of people that came out. A lot bigger than they expected. It seems to be continuing. So, the next weekend, another big protest. The next weekend, another big protest, all against the rightwing.

Jacobsen: Four days ago in the Guardian, “About 200,000 people protest across Germany against far-right AfD party.”

Kirkpatrick: Yes, that’s a positive sign. The negative sign is that Geert Wilders became the largest party in the Dutch parliament.

Jacobsen: Yes, he did.

Kirkpatrick: So, my point is: I think this pushback is starting to hurt Trump and them in the U.S. The point is, as long as you have a cult-type adoration for somebody, it will end up poorly. That’s the problem if you are not dealing with factual information, if you are dealing with cherrypicking what I want to believe, if you understand what I mean. Every judge is against – every judge. It is frustrating.

Jacobsen: What about your background and expertise in knowing so many languages and travelling to different areas? What about more developed Asian countries or in the Middle East? How are they reacting to this political moment in the United States? Is it even a concern to them?

Kirkpatrick: Of course, it is a major concern to them. I can tell you this. I work with people in the Middle East all the time. Of course, when you get somebody who’s out of control, and if they decide to do something and don’t stop them internally, it is not like Hitler. Hitler did bad things and whatever. In the end, the assembled might of the world ended him. I am not sure that is possible in the case of the United States today. I think the United States military may be so hegemonic that the assembled might of the world cannot defeat them. I am not asserting it. It is, at least, a possibility. It would be a devastating, destructive fight. Whoever is the guy who is in charge of the U.S. and wants to be a dictator or an authoritarian ruler? If he goes off the skids, they’re impossible to stop.

I had a business partner who was an Israeli Arab. He was 55 years old. His English was flawless, perfect. When he spoke, he sounded like an educated American. I said to him, “How come your English is exquisite? It is perfect. Why do you speak like this?” He said, “Language of the empire.” I said, “What?” He said, “Language of the empire if this was the time of Rome, my Latin would be perfect. But this is you guys. You guys rule the place. So, it is the language of the empire. More than that, it is the language of the previous empire.” But that’s the point. When Caesar goes mad, the world’s got a problem. But the more important part is what I was telling you at the beginning: I don’t think Donald Trump is so much the problem as a symptom of the problem. That is the point. I am unsure if my generation, the Baby Boomer generation, is the problem. My younger brother calls us – and he is part of the generation – the spoiled brats of the Greatest Generation. I don’t understand the reason. If you understand what I mean, you get the feeling that it is a sports contest.

Jacobsen: I do. That’s also an American phenomenon too.

Kirkpatrick: Yes. Of course, the Americans, when it comes to sports, are the best at sports that only we play.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kirkpatrick: [Laughing].

Jacobsen: That’s right. World sports are only played by Americans.

Kirkpatrick: We’re the best at the sports in the world that only we play. [Laughing] It is like a sports contest. I was told by a guy in Egypt one time. He said, “The guy you elect as President affects my life more than yours. I don’t have a say-so in it.” That’s the problem.

Jacobsen: That’s a powerful point.

Kirkpatrick: As I tell people who haven’t lived in other countries. One of the big differences between the U.S. and France, Germany, and even places like the Philippines is that I virtually never turn on the news and see a story about what is happening in the Philippines. But if you live in Manila and if you turn the news on, the chances are almost 100%. There will be a story about the United States. Maybe China is having a problem with the United States or something like this. What happens here affects people’s lives there. If a populace goes crazy or is irrational, it is a problem for everybody.

Jacobsen: Do you think, and this will tie into a future session with Rick (Rosner), the impact on other countries as the major world power more than it affects Americans internally in some cases, and the ignorance about that is another symptom outside figures like Trump of what you’ve termed the American Disease?

Kirkpatrick: I am not so sure. So, Scott, when you look at countries like the U.S., if I had to put my finger on what countries are most like the U.S. in the way people think, I would say, “Russia and China.” The reason I say that is Canada does at some points. You can walk up to somebody in the U.S. and say, “Have you travelled a lot?” They would say, “Oh God, yes, I have been to Wyoming. I have been to Texas. I went out to California. I went down to Key West.” Then you say, “Have you ever left the U.S.?’ “No, no, no,” or, maybe, “I went to Vancouver.” It is the same in Russia. You ask somebody if they have travelled. “Oh yes, I even went to Irkutsk. I have been to St. Petersburg. I went to Sergiyev Posad. “Have you left Russia?” “No, no, never.” China is the same way. Also, if you walk up to somebody in Russia, they expect you to speak Russian. Same in China. In Germany, it is not at all unusual to find somebody who speaks Greek or English. They just don’t speak German only. Americans tend to have this big country thinking. Because of that, they think internally. Scott, I’m sure You get American media.

Jacobsen: I do.

Kirkpatrick: What do you think when you hear an American news anchor? This is a country where you can freely express your opinion. It’s like, “Yes.” I could, frankly, pretty much freely express myself in Egypt. Not everyone could; if I owned a press, I wouldn’t be able to, but walking down the street. I can say whatever I want. Definitely, in Canada, you have no problem expressing your opinion. So, these guys hear this stuff. The good one, I am sure you hear it. “There was this giant hurricane that hit Texas. But only in America did people pull together to help their neighbour out.”

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kirkpatrick: No! They do that in Canada, Germany, Norway, and even in places like Cameroon. People just do that. In the U.S., the media will say, “Only in America do they do this.” I am sure you understand what I mean.

Jacobsen: Sure, it ties into another thing that you were saying. It connects to big concepts- one in the discussion and two in another discourse- the notion or idea of American Exceptionalism. The American Disease and American Exceptionalism are, in many ways, intertwined concepts.

Kirkpatrick: Absolutely, and if we’re greater than you are, why should we learn anything from you? If we could copy the Canadian healthcare system and it would have good outcomes for us, why should we do that if we are better than you?

Jacobsen: It’s an inflated self-esteem.

Kirkpatrick: It’s more than this, Scott. It’s purposefully switched-off reasoning. Another example is that you, a group of people, and I want to work together. We say, “We all want to work together for a common goal. We want x to happen. So, let’s everybody put our efforts together, and let’s make x happen.” I tell you, “Okay, guys, I will help out. But understand anything that happens at all. It is me first.” Okay?

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kirkpatrick: What was your attitude toward that person? So, the point is, you’ve got a politician and a group of Americans and legislators running around screaming, “America first.” It’s like, “Guys, think about the message you’re sending to everybody else.” By the way, I belong to the Triple Nine Society, which is like Mensa. However, they require an I.Q. at the 99.9th percentile. I was at one of their European meetings. It was in Germany. I was talking to Germans there, several of them. I would walk up to them and ask them. How would they translate “America first” into German? Of course, they know I am fluent in German. They know I am asking for a reason. Probably 80% thought briefly and said, “Deutschland über alles.” Are you familiar with that term?

Jacobsen: “Deutschland Uber”? Germany super…

Kirkpatrick: …over everything. That was the German national anthem. It was Germany over everybody, over everybody in the world. That was the lyrics. The national anthem is only the third verse of that song because they don’t say, “Deutschland über alles.” But “Deutschland über alles” was a big slogan of the Nazis, also “Deutschland zuerst,” which is Germany first. Those guys hearing Germany first think for a second and immediately tie it to a Nazi slogan.

Jacobsen: That’s right.

Kirkpatrick: It doesn’t work out for you internationally. It makes people suspicious of you. For me, it would be a much better position to get up and say, “The United States will take the position that is best for humanity, no matter what it is. What is good for everybody is good for us.” But you against me? It means that you will not be the biggest dog on the block someday. Then you’ve got a problem.

Jacobsen: Michio Kaku, a while ago, made a point that a lot of power, as you noted before, of the United States has been for a long time has been human capital, has been the H1-B Visas. To turn these people away or to turn them off from coming over, these people stay home or go back home. Not just, they don’t just pick up another job. With that skill, they create whole industries.

Kirkpatrick: Right, of course, the best example is you know who Jobs was. Jobs’s father was a Syrian immigrant.

Jacobsen: I haven’t done an analysis. I would like to do that by looking at the biggest people in the key industries, I.T. and so on, who have created the most successful businesses, then their family or personal history. I would assume you would find quite a few people from other countries because they were looking for a better life and opportunity. They contributed hugely.

Kirkpatrick: There is a beautiful video. You can probably find it if you Google “Guy Kawasaki.” Inc. Magazine, probably, “immigration,” do you know who Guy Kawasaki is?

Jacobsen: I know the name. I am not fully aware of this person.

Kirkpatrick: Guy Kawasaki was Apple’s software evangelist when they made the Mac, the Macintosh. So, his job was to go out and get software companies to write software for a new computer that was coming out called the Macintosh. If the Mac had no programs, it wouldn’t be worth anything. His job was to talk to existing software manufacturers, like Microsoft, in writing programs for the Mac before it came out. He then became, after he left Apple, a venture capitalist. That is why he is talking about this. He very interestingly said that he had a prototype Macintosh in a bag to show the software companies. He said, typically, he would meet with the CEO, CFO, and the CTO (the guy in charge of the programming). He said they would sit him down, and the CEO immediately said, “We’re going to need you to include a copy of our program with every Macintosh you sell. You pay us as you sell the Macintosh. You pay us for the program. That way, we are not marketing or anything.” The CFO would tell him, “On top of that, you will need to give us $250,000 in co-development funds so we can start this project.” The CTO would say, “And on top of this, you will need to assign a full-time engineer for when we have problems with it, and so on. You’re going to have to assign him here on-site. And you’re going to have to give us the computers and the programming environment we will need to create this program.” Kawasaki would say, ‘Before we discuss it, let me show you the Mac. He would turn it on and play this 3-dimensional chess game. Then he would close it and play with Mac Paint for a little bit, draw a few things, and then close it. Then, he would turn the computer off. He would look at them. He would look at the CEO and say, “We will not buy any of your programs. You’ll have to give the Macintosh team a copy of the program for free. But we won’t bundle it with any Macs, so you must sell it yourself. He would turn to the CFO. “We are not going to give you any co-development money either. If you decide to do it, you must finance this independently.” Then he turns to the CTO and says, “You won’t get a full-time engineer. We only have one full-time engineer for all of the developers to reach out to. He is going to be hard for you to get ahold of.” Then he’d say, “That’s all the good news. The bad news is that you will have to buy these leases that cost $10,000 apiece to develop this. You’ll have to pay $750 for a beta development environment with photocopied instructions.”

They’d say, “Okay, when can we get started?” But the point is, Kawasaki makes a great point about the fact that if it was him if he were in charge, he would do more than H1-B. He would tell people from anywhere. “If you have a great idea, you can come here and make it work. Come on down! That is exactly what we’re working for.” In Germany, I ate at a Syrian restaurant with some beautiful Middle Eastern food. I talked to the owner. He was one of the Syrian immigrants they let into the country. He had a restaurant and employed 8 Germans.

Jacobsen: There you go.

Kirkpatrick: I’m opening another restaurant. Here’s a guy who they let in as an immigrant fleeing Syria. Now, he employs 8 citizens and will open another one.

Jacobsen: Honestly, what better way to live up to what some would see as key American ideals than by coming out of a very difficult situation?

Kirkpatrick: Of course.

Jacobsen: And with a sense of hope and renewal.

Kirkpatrick: The amazing part is I have a close friend. His father came here from Greece. He is somewhat anti-immigrant. So, I never understood it. Now, of course, the other side of that is my kids are half-German. So, my ex-wife is German. My daughter lives in Germany. So, I work for Arabs. My girlfriend is Filipino. So, [Laughing] I have always considered the world my oyster. If I had it, I’d have a world passport and go anywhere. In the end, it is another political division. The amazing part for me. What was it that made the country division so important? Do you understand my point?

Jacobsen: I do. A huge indicator is the detachment reality in some of those political ideas. So, you were mentioning earlier about the age difference between Trump and Biden being significant and people being in denial that Trump is only four years younger than Biden. At that age, the distinction is not that great. Another one in the United States, certainly, looking from the outside…

Kirkpatrick: It is worse than that. Biden has been somewhat of a healthy person his whole life. Here is the other thing: let me give you another one you’re probably unaware of: Biden is a millionaire. The reason he is a millionaire is because he sold a memoir that sold in the millions. When Joe Biden became vice president, his net worth was around $360,000 (USD). He had been a senator for 30 years. That is very interesting. Think about that for a minute: he had been an American senator for 30 years. He had a $360,000 net worth. How corrupt [pt is this guy?

Jacobsen: He lived in the upper areas of the United States, but he did not live a detached, ultra-rich lifestyle.

Kirkpatrick was the senator from Delaware, which is tiny and right next to D.C. He never moved while he was a senator. He lived in his house in Delaware and took the train to work every morning.

Jacobsen: So, he had that interaction. He had that sense.

Kirkpatrick: He was a working-class guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who moved to Delaware. My point is: You turn on rigrightwingV today. You hear about the Biden crime family. This was a guy who was a senator for 30 years and wasn’t rich. That’s almost unheard of.

Jacobsen: Another big one in the United States, which one can’t mention, is the degree of Religiosity compared to many other developed nations.

Kirkpatrick: Yes, yes.

Jacobsen: The evangelical vote was very strong. There was an ethnic colouring – so to speak – to this as well. How strong is this playing into this? The problem is Religiosity. The Middle East is more religious than the developed world. I don’t know the English word, but in German, you would call it schein. It is visible but not real, if you understand what I mean.

Jacobsen: Pluralistic ignorance, you know? [Laughing]

Kirkpatrick: You’d have people in the Middle East who are Muslim because they’re Emirati, Kuwaiti, whatever. So, he is a Muslim. You find out that he hires servants. The servants are all Filipino. 2 or 3 a Filipino maid and a Filipino houseboy helping him out. Why are they Filipino? They are Filipino because the Filipinos are Christians. When he is sitting there with a glass of Scotch in his hand, they don’t think anything about it. But his persona outside of his house is not that he is in here drinking. It is, “I am this observant Muslim and so on.” I think you have a lot of this in the U.S. I spent a few months in the Philippines a few months ago. This is a country that is not only very religious, but it is publicly religious. It is visible everywhere, if you understand what I mean. You may not know if you have never been to the Philippines. They are intensely religious. You see it everywhere.

Jacobsen: I know some of the secular community there. I have done some interviews with Filipinos and Filipinas. To them, it is sometimes a little more than hard. [Laughing]

Kirkpatrick: You know abortion is illegal.

Jacobsen: Sure, it makes it doubly difficult.

Kirkpatrick: More than this, the laws are skewed hard against women, unfortunately. In any case, my point is Religiosity; if people were truly religious Christians, then Trump would be the biggest turnoff you ever saw.

Jacobsen: Someone pointed this out to me. They made an interesting distinction. We talk about fundamentalists and literalists of the Bible, things of this nature. They added an extra term that made an important distinction to me. So, I cannot take credit for this. I cannot remember who did this for me. They called them “selective literalists.” That encapsulates a lot of it. They take certain Bible passages, read those literally, and then ignore the inconvenient parts.

Kirkpatrick: I can be more specific than that. What passages are they looking at?

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Kirkpatrick: Do you know who Dr. Will Durant was?

Jacobsen: That name sounds very familiar.

Kirkpatrick: He wrote a series of books called The Story of Civilization. They are wonderful. It is a history of mankind from the beginning of civilization to the French Revolution. It is 11,000 pages long in 11 volumes. It is wonderful. But Dr. Durant said that Protestantism is Paul’s victory over Peter, and Evangelicalism is Paul’s over Christ. So, the problem is that the Evangelicals are cherrypicking the words of Paul, who was a man who never met Jesus, never spoke to him, never saw him, and frequently was at odds with the early church. So, Paul wrote things like, “If a man doesn’t work, he shouldn’t eat.” Jesus never said anything close to that. Another one is Paul wrote in Corinthians, “Women should not speak in the church, even if they have a question. Let them be silent and ask their husbands at home, for it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church.” That is opposed to the teaching of Jesus. There is your cherrypicking. They are cherry-picking Paul and ignoring Jesus. That is what it is. The concept of Hell was not a big concept for Jesus. It is a huge concept for Evangelicals.

Jacobsen: Do you think politics trumps religion in the United States now?

Kirkpatrick: Absolutely, politics trumps religion here. I think if a lot of the people on the right who claim to be Evangelical Christians got a preacher who preached what I just said, “It is time to get back to the teachings of Jesus and not Paul, and in order to do that we can’t follow a guy with three wives who has assaulted women and found guilty of sexual assault. I think you’d have a large number of people leave the church.

Jacobsen: Do you think politics trumping religion is a religious impulse driving a lot of political discourse now, too?

Kirkpatrick: It can be. It certainly could be. I can tell you this. It is a natural progression of civilization. It will happen. Unfortunately, religion will get less and less. Eventually, it will destroy civilization. Then we get a new one. By the way, I can’t take credit for that one. That is one from Dr. Durant, who said, “You have religion. You have a secular society. At first, religion is very powerful. Pretty soon, it starts getting trumped by reason. Then, eventually, reason wins out, and people become weary and profane and “Why am I even here?”. Then something happens and brings forth a new religion, and he ends at once saying, “As long as there is poverty, there will be gods.”

Jacobsen: That is backed by the statistical evidence.

Kirkpatrick: The big problem we have today and what the conversation should be is the next two years or one year. Two years ago, I was talking about the Russian man I was talking about, I was talking about Vladimir Putin. He liked Putin. But Putin was in his second term as President of Russia. My friend was a little weary about him. He liked him, generally. I told him. “I don’t believe so, Gregory.” I gave him the reasons why. But we agreed that if he didn’t step down at the end of this second term, he would stay the ruler of the country that Russia had a problem with. Now, you see what that problem is and how it manifests itself. I will say the same thing here. If Trump is re-elected, the world has a problem. It has a serious problem. I don’t know how it will manifest itself. But it has a serious problem.

Jacobsen: Kirk, thank you very much for your time today.

Kirkpatrick: You’re certainly welcome, Scott. Keep me informed.

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