Israel, Ukraine and U.S. military aid

Make Me Smart October 9, 2023 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Let’s go, enough jibber jabber. It’s time for some official jibber jabber. Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense. I’m sorry.

Kimberly Adams 

We need to change our tagline from we make today make sense to the official jibber jabber. I can’t even say it. Anyway. I’m Kimberly Adams. Thank you, everyone for joining us on this Monday, October the ninth we are very glad to have you along for the ride as we begin yet another adventurous week.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, no joke. Why don’t we we will start obviously, with the news. You first I mean, really, obviously, there’s one big story that I think we’re both going to talk about a little bit.

Kimberly Adams 

Sure, which is the ongoing war in Israel. After the attack over the weekend by Hamas, we’ve got hundreds, I think it was upwards of 1,000 people killed between both sides last time I checked. So there’s a New York Times piece that I’m gonna link to in the show notes. But this is everywhere, which is that the United States is working on sending more military aid to Israel. And so Anthony Anthony Blinken today was saying, who actually was on Meet the Press yesterday that Israel asked for specific additional assistance. And at that time, they were declining to say what additional detail what additional details about what specific things were going to be sent. Suffice it to say the United States will probably be very generous in terms of giving military, Israel the military support that it needs to defend itself against Hamas. Now, the United States has traditionally had very strong support for Israel, backed by much of the American population. And that used to be bipartisan. And I think it will be very interesting in the weeks to come as the discussions over money for Israel continue to come up, just like there have been debates over money for Ukraine. There are generational divides in the support for these kinds of initiatives. And and I’m looking at polling from Gallup that came out just in March, which is that support for Israel by Americans has actually declined a bit in recent years, particularly among younger generations, there was a partisan divide, which is that and actually let me pause here to specify that we’re talking about support for Israel and support for the Palestinians. Most people will delineate out thing groups like Hamas and terrorist attacks, that they’re talking about Israel and Palestinians, general population. And when it comes to support for Israel, including financial support, that tends to be very popular in the United States, but that popularity is declining. So I’m going to read a bit, just one paragraph here about the generational gaps. “Aside from partisan differences, Gallup continues to see generational distinctions and how US adults view the Palestinian Israeli conflict, net sympathy towards Israel, the percentage sympathizing more with the Israelis than the Palestinians is solidly positive among older generations, including Baby Boomers.” And Baby Boomers is plus 46%. Generation X plus 32%. And the Silent Generation plus 31%. By contrast, millennials are now evenly divided with 42%, sympathizing more with the Palestinians and 40%, with Israelis, yielding a negative two net Israel sympathy score, you can put that in the margin of error or whatever. But in this polling, there were too few adult members of Gen Z to report but the limited available daily data suggests their views on the question are similar to millennials, we are heading into a presidential election that is most likely going to be about war at this point, right, at least in a couple of components. So we have the Ukraine war, and now we have this war, that’s at least going to take up some of the oxygen in the room. And I suppose that may be overstating it, because Trump is going to take up so much of the oxygen.

Kai Ryssdal 

I think I think I think saying some is fair, I think it’s going to be on the low side, some but but it will.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, it’s going to be some. And I think it used to be a lot safer for a Democratic presidential candidate to just say, we are 100% behind Israel, no questions asked all the way we are here. And I think Biden is going to have to walk walk a very delicate line here, both politically and in terms of the aide and what weapons are being sent in. And what kind of support is given as he and his team turn an eye to younger voters who are already skeptical of him.

Kai Ryssdal 

I think that’s fascinating. I was not aware of that shift in sentiment as you go down the age scale, I guess. Super, super interesting, super difficult challenge for American politicians. The interesting part, of course, is that most American politicians are still on the older side and so they still support Israel wholeheartedly. The other thing that’s going to come into play here as aid for Israel goes up to the hill. And as they fight the Senate being out of session, until next week, and the house, whatever the House Republicans are doing is the bundling. Yeah, they’re gonna bundle together aid for Israel in and for the Ukrainians. And that’s going to cause a whole nother set of, of mishegoss, if I might, among lawmakers about how to how to apportion that aid and, and to do what you know, the United States has historically done.

Kimberly Adams 

Or it may make things easier, you know, you have Republicans whose skew much heavier and their support for Israel, then some of the Democrats, especially people in the Progressive Caucus, who are very skeptical about sending more military aid to Israel, even in this particular situation, versus, you know, people on the Republican side who don’t want to spend send more money to Ukraine, and this may be one of those deals that gets each side of what they want, or at least some people what they want. And everybody takes a bitter pill of something they don’t like. But I don’t know.

Kai Ryssdal 

Although remember our conversation from however number of weeks ago, in which we talked in depth about the dysfunction in Washington and the dysfunction, specifically among the Republican Party, and how one party in Congress is focused on not negotiating and not compromising and not swallowing the bitter pill, but denying the other side what they want.

Kimberly Adams 

That’s true. This is true. And I mean, in all of this, of course, is in this this terrible bad backdrop of, you know, so many lives lost and probably more to come. And also, just, every time I, this conflict flares up, it’s I worked in the Middle East for a while, you know, and ended up covering quite a few stories related to the Palestine-Israeli conflict, the Middle East conflict, whatever you want to call it. And it’s really hard to see a way out of it, you know, people have been working for a two state solution for so long. That doesn’t work, Israel regularly gets labeled with the apartheid, you know, criticisms, and at the same time, the Palestinians have issues of, you know, not having unified government and having components of leadership that are willing to resort to all kinds of tactics to try to get more freedoms and land for the people. And it’s a bad situation. And I was talking to a friend of mine earlier today about how there’s really no good way to talk about it, that doesn’t get a whole bunch of people mad at you. And there’s also not, it’s one of those political problems that doesn’t have an easy solution. And in an era of talking points and quick answers, I think people really struggle with this one, just not having it.

Kai Ryssdal 

Totally, totally, completely agree, completely agree. The other thing just to give a little nod to mine, and which is generally the same thing, the whole funding challenge and all of that. There’s also a government shutdown that’s coming in a matter of a month plus, and we have to deal with that. You know. So it is it is about to be a very difficult time on Capitol Hill at a moment when Congress and Republicans in the House are not equipped to deal with difficult times.

Kimberly Adams 

This is very true. Very true. Yeah.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right. So I have one other one that just just because it caught my eye, it’s completely off topic. Totally interesting, though. It’s an item in Bloomberg today about Tesla. And let’s be specifically here about the car company and not the guy who runs it because oh my god. But look, Tesla’s been cutting prices a lot. So they were the first mover the first real mover in the EV space. Right they dominate that space to the tune of more than half of all EV’s sold in this country are Tesla’s they’ve been cutting prices for months now. And here’s the thing from Bloomberg at just under $39,000, the base Model 3 sedan now cost almost $9,000 less than the average amount paid for a car or a truck in the United States. So Elon Musk has built market share. And now he’s cutting prices as we increase that market share, as Detroit is killing itself to make money making EVs totally interesting. Wow. I thought, yeah,

Kimberly Adams 

I think that’s interesting, too, because it also gives you the a nice little. What do you say? Test Case? That’s not the example. Anyway, a nice little example of what first mover privilege is, right?

Kai Ryssdal

Oh, yeah, totally.

Kimberly Adams

You know, an economic study. I’m sure there will be papers written about this in the future, about just the fact that he can do this, because he was first and that gives a lot of power in what is going to be a pretty significant chunk of the economy sooner rather than later.

Kai Ryssdal 

For sure, for sure. All right, Charlton. Let’s move on. I will confess I do not have a make me smile today just wasn’t feeling it just wasn’t feeling it.

Kimberly Adams

You don’t want to talk about McCarthy?

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh my god. Well, so, so alright, so fine. So I Kimberly and I were talking before we turned the microphones on before we started the official jibber jabber, we had some we had some unofficial jibber jabber and I joke that my make me smile ought to be that Kevin McCarthy said today he is open to being speaker of the house again. And that just made me laugh out loud. Just that’s it just made me laugh out loud. Because come on. That’s it. That’s

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, I had I had a similar reaction when I saw it. But you know, as as we were just saying, it’s a very serious thing. But sometimes you just have to chuckle at the it’s, it’s like a sitcom sometimes. Okay. So, I have a make me smile, similar to the ones that you bring, where it’s not a smile so much as an interesting, like, twist on things. So I saw this.

Kai Ryssdal 

Which I think is totally legit by the way. Sorry. I think it’s totally legit. It’s okay. All right, good. Just checking.

Kimberly Adams 

No, agreed. I agree with you. That’s why I’m doing it. So this is a story from UPI. I think a lot of people may not know what UPI is, but it’s a news wire agency similar to the Associated Press or Reuters. It used to be a lot bigger than it is, but it still exists. Right. Okay. UPI has an odd news section and there was a headline that said sinking horse rescued from Colorado bog. And basically the story is okay, you’re smiling already great. Firefighters in Colorado teamed up with local residents to rescue a horse that wandered into a bog and started to sink. They said in the Facebook post that crews responded to a rural property in Weld County and called for and called for help and the Loveland Fire Rescue Authority’s Large Animal Rescue Team, assisted in assessing the horses situation and crews worked together for three and a half hours. to extricate the horse area neighbors assisted first responders in the operation, the horse was freed from its predicament, and assessed by a Colorado State University veterinarian. All is well. Now then, if you had watched a particular movie, you would know that this moment has striking similarities to this scene roll tape.

Atreyu

Artrax you’re sinking. Come on! Turn around! You have to no! Come on Artrax!

Kimberly Adams

That would be a scene from Neverending Story.

Kai Ryssdal 

You’re so pleased with yourself right now.

Kimberly Adams 

I really, that was a scene from Neverending Story. Where the main character well, one of the main characters Atreyu, is trying to lead his beloved horse Artrax through the Swamp of Sadness. And as you can hear from that tape, it did not go as well as the rescue in Colorado. So it made me smile because they got their horse out of the Swamp of Sadness. And I feel like I’ve accomplished something in life now.

Kai Ryssdal 

I can hear the glee coming out with the Comrex line.

Kimberly Adams

So it really is. I saw this this story and it was like it was designed for us. I was like, I know. Like I know. I said I wasn’t going to keep trolling you over Neverending Story. Like the universe.

Kai Ryssdal

No it’s fine.

Kimberly Adams

The universe meant this for us. Oh my Lord. All right. That is it for us today. Please join us tomorrow for our weekly deep dive we are going to check in on sort of what the purpose of corporations are, which is something that came up a lot in 2019 when a bunch of corporations promised to value stakeholders like workers and the community, along with shareholders and given all of the union strikes and fights we’re having right now it’d be we thought it’d be an interesting time to check in on that promise and see what has changed since 2019. What hasn’t changed? And what that has to do with all these strikes.

Kai Ryssdal 

Spoiler alert a lot. Till then questions and comments come in. Makemesmart@marketplace.org, 508-U-B- SMART is how you dial the phone if you want to. So funny Charlton was like yeah, no Kai, you’re supposed to say something I’m not gonna play the music. Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Charlton Thorp. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Our intern is Niloufar Shahbandi.

Kimberly Adams 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital.

Kai Ryssdal

There you have it.

Kimberly Adams

I feel like over the course of years, I’ll play you enough clips of this movie that you won’t actually have to see.

Kai Ryssdal 

I will have seen it virtually or by by virtue of the audio. Yeah.

Kimberly Adams

Exactly, exactly.