Les Miserables by Victor Hugo w/Jesan Sorrells & Libby Unger

0:00 My name is Jesan Sorrells and this is the

0:04 Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number

0:08 194. So I'm going to

0:11 read a little bit of the introduction to the edition

0:15 of the book we are going to read today.

0:19 And. Well, I

0:23 wanna. I wanna make some points that are from

0:26 this particular introduction that I think are relevant

0:30 for our conversation today.

0:37 This book that we're going to cover today is the culminating work

0:41 of the author's long career. It was published in

0:45 1862, when the author was 60. An instant success

0:48 with the public, the book has stood since then as a masterpiece of fiction, both

0:52 for the emotional intensity of its dramatic story and for a richness that

0:56 defies any simple description. Undoubtedly, readers

1:00 come to the book for the deeply engrossing characters and stay on, as

1:03 the author himself predicted, for the wider social and

1:07 historic panorama. The political timing

1:11 of the publication of this book was auspicious. Isolated by

1:15 exile from the empire of Napoleon iii, whose authoritarianism was

1:18 relaxing as his effectiveness and popularity were waning,

1:22 the author found a ready audience for his progressive,

1:26 politically progressive fervor. Despite his long

1:30 list of works in poetry, fiction and drama, the author had been most widely known

1:33 before this novel as a public figure, defender of the national conscience.

1:38 And now homesick for his home country, but unwilling to accept

1:41 the amnesty offered by the emperor he despised, he was eager

1:45 for a chance to remind his home country of. Of his presence.

1:52 A friend reported to him that all of the major. All of the people

1:56 in the major city that this book is focused on were

1:59 raving about the book during its publication.

2:04 As for the critics, the author clearly took it

2:07 as a compliment that his liberal views had enraged the reactionary, the

2:11 conservative, Catholic and the Bonapartist journals. The

2:15 gratifying enthusiasm of the younger critics, however, was not unanimously sustained. For the

2:19 book had appeared outside of its time when he began

2:22 writing it in 1845. The romantic traditions of intense sentiment

2:26 and crusading idealism were prevalent.

2:30 And I'm going to down a little bit. And

2:34 yet, rising above the fluctuations of literary criticism, the book has always

2:38 retained a powerful hold on the public. And writers have continued to turn to this

2:41 author and. And this book for inspiration. Diverse authors

2:45 such as Arthur Rambaud, Stephane

2:48 Mallarme and Paul Claudel were influenced by this giant

2:52 of romanticism. Andre Gaday called him the

2:56 greatest master of images and sonorities, of symbols and

2:59 language forms in all of French

3:04 literature. Close quote.

3:10 As for me today on the show, my interaction

3:14 with this book is very

3:17 interesting. My engagement with this book is very interesting.

3:21 And you know, the reality is that my engagement with

3:25 the books and the topics that we cover on this show covers,

3:28 ranges, covers and ranges all over the place, right.

3:32 Sometimes I've seen the movie, right, that the books that we are covering

3:37 come from. Sometimes I've been to the theater show and sometimes I've even watched a

3:41 trailer for the movie based on the book before even reading the book. And

3:45 sometimes I come to some books virginally. I have no previous knowledge of the author,

3:49 the book, or even any derivative works generated from the book.

3:53 And this is how most people are these days and how most people have approached

3:56 books through the long 20th century,

4:01 from movies to musicals. The book we are covering today has never

4:05 been out of print since it was Originally published in 1862,

4:09 which it stands alongside another book that we covered, last Episode,

4:13 Ben Hur, as never being out of print. It

4:16 has inspired people to act in ways that they never would have before. And it

4:20 meets criteria in that it activates readers,

4:23 it inspires conversations, and it generates a need for

4:27 action from folks. And the

4:31 author, who we'll talk about in a little bit and who was just mentioned there

4:34 in the introduction, I think I suspect probably

4:38 did all of this intentionally.

4:42 Today we are going to begin our conversation

4:47 about a massive book and we are going

4:51 to try to glean what we can from it and

4:54 apply it to our real lives. This book lies

4:58 at the headwaters of the most popular and highest grossing stage musicals

5:02 of all time. It has been turned

5:06 into movies, it has been turned into a television show.

5:10 It's been everywhere. And again, this book has never been out of print. It's

5:14 original publication in 1862. Today we're going

5:18 to be covering. Whoop, there we go. Victor

5:21 Hugo's Les Miserable.

5:25 Leaders, let us take to the barricades.

5:29 The only thing we have to lose is our

5:33 cowardice.

5:36 And joining me on this journey today and back for the first

5:40 time this season is our co host who's a

5:44 little jet lagged and she's joining us from her vacation at an

5:47 undisclosed location, which will remain undisclosed, but she is. Jet lag folks.

5:51 Libby Unger. How are you doing today, Libby?

5:55 Good. Bonjour.

6:00 Well, let's lay out. Okay, yeah, let's go ahead. Let's get into

6:04 it. So talk to us, I about

6:08 this book. Talk to us about the impact of this book. Talk to us about

6:11 what this book means for you. It means to you.

6:15 You have a lot of familiarity with this book. You go to

6:18 France, you, you are native, you're not native, but you're a French

6:22 speaker. Talk to me about, talk to

6:26 us about this book. What does this book mean to Libby Unger?

6:31 Your introduction and discussing,

6:35 you know, how you come about, you know, books in

6:39 particular, you know, intel like re. Re

6:43 rereading this and preparing for

6:48 was more the. The stage version of Les Miserable

6:51 Miserables and the soundtrack to it

6:55 and going back to the revolutionary times,

6:59 you know, of France and. And such.

7:05 That appeal, the artistic appeal was. Was

7:09 embedded young around this book and the value in it

7:13 and then

7:16 semi awareness of the French history.

7:20 But it wasn't until I started preparing for

7:24 this in. In detail and the questions you teed

7:27 up around made me really think more about

7:32 like the history of France, you know, from you know,

7:35 their, their revolution to their final, you know, to the

7:39 current republic. I mean I really was

7:43 unaware of the detail and how

7:46 fraught with wars, you know, France was.

7:52 You have the two different monarchs that this,

7:56 that Hugo dealt with plus the two different

8:00 Napoleonic regimes. I, you know,

8:03 honestly I just had broad strokes of a French Revolution and

8:07 Napoleon and a king and you know, know a few of those

8:11 but not the details and the, and

8:14 that each generation, you know that

8:18 was born, you know, 1790 on.

8:22 Was fought with. Was fraught with a war. Yeah. For the

8:26 monarch to ret you to get back in power. Napoleon back

8:30 monarch Napoleon. And then you finally get the

8:33 republic that was somewhat modeled after the US

8:38 but yeah, I'm actually

8:42 looking forward to the topics that you've teed up to start to

8:45 start talking about the heroism and the moral.

8:51 The characters that bring up different moral.

8:59 Issues for us to be concerned about as well as models for us to think

9:02 about. So yeah, I'm excited for it. I

9:06 do have the same. Did you have the same. Aha. With respect to

9:10 history? I know you're more of a history buff. Yeah, no, that's.

9:14 Yeah, that's a great question. Yes,

9:18 I did. So one of the big things that kind of

9:21 jumps out to you at the beginning of Les Mis is. And

9:25 I'm going to kind of shorten it here when I refer to the book.

9:29 But the big thing, one of the big things that jumps out to you about

9:31 this book right from the get go is

9:36 how much of a handle Victor Hugo has on to your point, French

9:40 history. Like he has a handle on exactly

9:43 the path of development.

9:47 Right. Because he,

9:51 he's surrounded by it. Right. He's surrounded by people who remembered,

9:55 you know, Napoleon who remembered that history. And so the.

9:59 Those stories in that lived history from probably would have been

10:03 parents and grandparents for Hugo and people

10:07 in his, in his neighborhoods and in his communities. That's one of the very

10:10 first things that jumps off to you, jumps off the page to you as you

10:14 read Les Mis. The other

10:17 thing is you begin to realize and, and this is really what came home for

10:21 me just how,

10:26 just how scared everybody else of the European continent

10:30 was of France at that time.

10:35 And it's easy to kind of not easy

10:39 as an American. And, and this is, you know, the

10:42 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. This year

10:46 we will be talking about the Declaration and the independent Declaration of Independence in the

10:49 Constitution with our De Rolo Nixon. That's going to be coming out on,

10:53 on July 1st, ahead of July 4th. And I will very specific

10:57 things to say about, about our Constitution, our Declaration of independence at

11:01 250. But it's

11:05 easy to be sort of as an American to kind of look at the French

11:08 Revolution kind of like Thomas Jefferson did and either fall in love with it

11:12 and then wonder at its excesses at the end, the Reign of terror and all

11:16 of that, or to take the view

11:19 that the British did, which is, which was

11:23 at the time. You keep that crap over there. We don't want to hear you

11:27 keep it across the Channel. And don't you dare go come over here. We'll come,

11:30 we'll come over there and do with you. Right. That's how. Right. Which

11:34 we. Which they did. Exactly. But don't you dare bring that garbage over

11:38 here. Don't you run that up here.

11:42 And so it's easy to take either the American perspective or the British

11:45 perspective, but to absolutely understand from a European

11:49 continental perspective how powerful that revolution

11:53 was and how much it rattled the cages of everybody on that continent.

11:57 That jumps off to you. That jumps off the pages to you of Les Mis,

12:00 Rob, because Hugo knew, he understood all of this.

12:05 And it's fascinating to sort of realize that

12:10 the, the, the potential, I think

12:15 the potential in the next 25 years for the French to run that continent again

12:19 is, is right there. It's right there. The English

12:23 aren't going to do it. The Germans have been denied

12:27 and who else is there? The Spanish are in, are never. They've never been interested

12:31 in running the continent. They've just never been interested in being in charge. And

12:35 the Italians, God bless them, they don't have it in them.

12:39 So who's left? Well, it's the French. And so

12:43 it's going to be interesting to watch I think over the next 25 years

12:47 some of that, that

12:51 not fear, but Some of

12:55 that, yeah. Well,

12:59 I guess maybe fear is a good word. Some of that fear will I think

13:02 begin to drip back into, into folks

13:06 on the continent. I don't know if I have a good hold on this, but

13:09 it was something that definitely jogged in my brain reading Les Mis, reading this

13:12 book. It

13:18 as you see some of the European trends, you know,

13:21 they've been trying to infiltrate the US over the last,

13:25 you know, couple of decades or more. But

13:29 I never had a full appreciation

13:34 for the empiric nature

13:38 of the French until

13:42 you see, until just going into greater detail about,

13:46 you know, those 100 years, you know, 1780s

13:50 to 1880s

13:54 and then seeing your, the history over the last couple

13:58 decades, you know, the more liberal

14:01 progressive thinking that's coming from, you know, you,

14:05 Europe entering, you know, entering our

14:09 ways and.

14:14 Does make me think that they, you know, they're almost like

14:18 the Chinese to some degree, that they have a long term

14:22 perspective of where they sit in history,

14:28 you know, so it, it, it'll be if

14:31 it, it is interesting. Economic

14:36 security is one of the key, key themes

14:40 that I see as to how

14:44 you gain power or you fight off,

14:48 you fight off invading resources through economic

14:53 security and that when there's economic

14:56 instability, that's when these,

15:00 the monarchs and dictatorships, you'll come in.

15:04 And someone who has a long view of history

15:07 knows that if they create insecurity,

15:11 that creates room for that new

15:15 leadership to come in. And now that

15:19 it sounds, you know, if you were living back

15:23 in the times of the mid Middle Ages and the revolution

15:26 and the enlightenment, etc. That's not far fetched to think

15:30 about because poverty and economic

15:33 insecurity was the way of the world. Correct? Right. It

15:37 wasn't until industrialization and the US

15:41 kind of dominated around, you know, and creating economically

15:44 independent and viable industries and

15:48 countries that we stopped seeing more being so prominent.

15:51 So it's very interesting

15:56 that over the last 15 or

16:00 20 years divisiveness and ins

16:04 and trying to create economic instability

16:09 is being introduced into what was a stable

16:13 system. And you have to wonder if it's being done intentionally

16:17 because that's the only way the empires

16:21 can take back their power.

16:25 Well, and you, you. Well, let's. Let me. There's several things

16:29 you brought up there and I want to hit on all of them and I

16:31 think Les Mis hits on all of them. Let me do, let me go back

16:34 and start. Oh my gosh, this book hits on all of it. And the poverty

16:38 piece is one of the other things that really jumped out to me. But I

16:40 want to, I want to keep my powder dry on that for just a second

16:43 because that's, I think, critical to understanding this book.

16:47 So. Yeah, so

16:50 Victor Hugo, right? Let's talk a little about him. So he

16:54 was a. Just like the author of Ben Hur, Lou

16:58 Wallace. He was a

17:01 romantic writer, capital R

17:04 romanticist. And there was something that occurred to me

17:10 actually on Saturday, which I'll tell talk about a little bit,

17:14 but he was. We, we in our Post World War

17:18 II consensus, we don't understand what the power of

17:21 romanticism and we don't understand anymore

17:25 sort of how that, that deeply impacted

17:29 authors such as Hugo and Lew Wallace. He

17:32 was born in 1802, so talk about, you know, the revolution literally

17:36 occurred like the French Revolution literally occurred like

17:40 what, 10, 15 years before he was born.

17:44 So he was born in 1802. He died in 1885.

17:49 He was a giant of French letters.

17:52 Not only did he write Les Mis, he also wrote

17:57 the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which, you know, the, the

18:01 publication of that book actually encouraged

18:05 the French to, to restore that cathedral because it became such

18:08 a, such, such a tourist magnet.

18:12 He wrote poetry, he wrote essays, he was a playwright,

18:16 he was a journalist, he was a politician,

18:20 and he was a human rights activist. Now when we talk about human rights

18:24 activism, I don't want, I don't want the listeners to think of this in

18:27 terms of the kind of human rights activism that

18:31 we see in our time. This wasn't cynical

18:36 activism on, on, on Hugo's part.

18:39 He wasn't trying to grift or hustle. He actually believed

18:43 that just like folks coming out of the French Revolution

18:47 believed that you could remake the world, you could actually have

18:50 utopia on earth, and that it was

18:54 within human beings hands in the 18th,

18:58 sorry, in the 19th century to be able to do that. He

19:01 genuinely believed that. And that came about because of his

19:04 romanticism. He wrote plays like

19:08 Cromwell and dramas Hernani. He produced more

19:12 than. I didn't know this until I went and looked at his Wikipedia profile, but

19:15 he produced more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime

19:19 and was an abolitionist around

19:23 slavery and around capital punishment. There have been

19:26 accusations of racism thrown at Hugo, but they don't

19:30 stick because he actually like moved his position around on a lot of

19:34 things, in particular in relation to the

19:38 French shenanigans in Algeria. Algeria

19:42 and in, in Northern Africa during his time.

19:47 And I'm just going to quote directly from here. His opposition to absolutism and his

19:51 literary stature established him as a national hero. Hugo

19:54 died on 22 May, in 1885, aged 83,

19:58 he was given a state funeral in the Pantheon of Paris, which was attended by

20:02 over 2 million people.

20:05 That's ridiculous. 2 million people showed up for a writer.

20:11 Hemingway, eat your heart out. At that time, which 2 million

20:14 people? Yeah, the population was what?

20:18 Yeah, like Paris, right? Yeah, you know, significant.

20:23 Significant. The dude was just.

20:27 He breathed hard and, like, the French moved.

20:32 You'll never see a guy like that ever again in letters. That won't ever

20:35 happen again. Like, the twilight of the writer started occurring at the

20:39 end of the 20th century and. And the

20:43 sun. I won't say the sun is set on the writer, but.

20:47 But the kind of discussions we're having right now around writing and around the art

20:50 of writing. One of the things I've postulated on the show about the

20:54 death of the novel, I do actually think the novel's dead. I

20:58 actually do. I don't think writing's dead. I don't think the book is

21:02 dead. But I think the novel as a thing that a

21:05 book delivers is dead. I think that's

21:09 DOA now, because you can do so many other different things. You can go watch

21:12 the book or see the streaming show or nowadays, dump the

21:16 thing into the AI and generate something that looks just as good. And so

21:19 the novel, the fictionalized account of.

21:24 The fictionalized account that draws emotions from people

21:28 and drives them to action, the kind of thing that Hugo

21:32 loved and was romantic about.

21:38 I kept thinking about Hegel reading about

21:42 Hugo. And it's similar from

21:46 both. From a writing perspective. I know Hegel

21:50 was not a fiction writer, but, you know,

21:53 poet, you know, political.

21:58 They both recognized what motivates

22:01 humanity and what demoralizes

22:05 humanity. And that was what was coming through

22:09 from a Hugo perspective is his own

22:13 ability to evolve and then sacrifice

22:18 for what he knew was right. You know, that's what

22:22 Les Mis is all about with the different characters, is about

22:26 the power of redemption and doing what's right.

22:34 Just at a human level, even if it may cost you power.

22:37 I'm. Power and prestige. Yeah,

22:41 yeah. But it just about. But what I really loved is the whole story is

22:45 about redemption. And if you

22:48 believe in someone and you tell them that they can

22:52 redeem, like the bishop did,

22:55 right, that the right soul, the

22:59 right person will receive that and say, I need to do the.

23:03 I need to pay it forward and do the right thing.

23:07 And that is a reflection, I think, of the. Of

23:11 Hugo's belief in the redempt, you know, in the evolution and

23:14 redemption. Redemption, redemptive

23:18 ability of a Human. Hegel's kind of that way

23:22 too from a self evolution

23:26 perspective. And we like to see

23:29 people or I know I'm inspired by those who

23:34 choose the do the hard thing because it's the right

23:38 thing. And that is what movements will.

23:42 Populist movements will come behind.

23:46 Yeah. And that

23:50 his characters, the characters in Les Mis are fully formed

23:54 people. They're not even, even Javert, even the

23:58 villain. Right. Is a fully formed human

24:02 being. Yes. Not a, he's not a one dimensional

24:05 avatar standing in for something else. And this is another

24:09 reason I say the novel is probably not. Probably is.

24:12 Is. Is. Is is. If not dead on life support.

24:17 Because we don't have writers who see people as

24:20 fully formed multi dimensional

24:24 individuals running around in the world. Instead writers. Now that's why we

24:27 have to go back to historical. The Mark Andreessen

24:31 philosophy is. I don't read anything recent. I, I read what's

24:35 endured. But the, the piece I,

24:38 I hit, I, I finally realized like what it was about

24:42 both Hagel and Hugo that

24:47 resonated with me in particular is they kept trying to find,

24:51 they kept trying to meant what they said.

24:56 Right. Like first believed in the monarch

25:00 and you know, and was willing to take compensation

25:04 for his riding with the monarch. And then the monarch disappoints and

25:07 so then he's pro Napoleon and believes Napoleon is going to

25:11 do the right thing for their French. And then he's disappointed,

25:15 you know, and he tries to put his, you know, belief

25:19 again into those big institutions. They all fail

25:22 him, you know, which we all, you know, if you're awake

25:26 at all, you realize the institutions are for the betterment of the

25:30 institutions and not the individual. And so

25:34 you ultimately need to go within and say what is the right thing

25:38 to do from a moral perspective and

25:42 live that way. That's what Hagel did. That's what Hugo's message

25:45 was. And you know, and you know me, that's my message from

25:49 a leadership perspective as well. Well, and I think so

25:53 to your point, like I said, I was, I

25:57 was having a conversation today with somebody else, business conversation. And one of the points

26:01 that I made to him is that

26:04 we used to have people. That applies here. We used to have people who,

26:08 who spoke with and led with

26:12 moral authority. Right. We talked a little bit about this on our Malcolm

26:16 X episode probably a year and a half ago, maybe two years ago. Now

26:20 one of the fascinating things about Malcolm X is you could disagree with where his

26:23 morals came from, but he had moral authority. He spoke with moral

26:27 authority. Matty Ross, the Character in

26:31 the Charles Porter's book True Grit.

26:36 If you watch the Joel and Ethan Cohen

26:40 remake of True Grit, the way that character is portrayed in

26:44 there is a lot closer to the Matty Ross of the book than in the

26:47 John Wayne movie. Right, The John Wayne Matty Ross, but the girl

26:51 in the John Wayne version and the, and the girl in the Joel and

26:55 Ethan Cohen version, Maddie, both of them have

26:58 rock ribbed morality. They speak from. They speak with moral

27:02 authority. Right, they act with moral authority. Malcolm X

27:05 acted. Exactly, exactly.

27:09 Malcolm X, you know, spoke with moral authority.

27:13 Matty Ross speaks with and was written as a character with moral

27:17 authority. And Victor Hugo, to your

27:21 point here, Victor Hugo wrote as a

27:24 romanticist who was in love with, to your point,

27:27 institutions. And I love how you frame this. The institutions meant what they

27:31 said, but someone had to be the moral authority behind that.

27:34 And so he turned his pen to basically,

27:38 basically forcing the institutions to be the thing they said they were going

27:42 to be. And you see this also in Ben

27:46 Hur. So Lou Wallace, when Lou Wallace writes about

27:49 Masala and he writes about Judah Ben Hur, the reason why

27:53 Judah Ben Hur is on a mission of revenge that

27:57 winds up in a chariot race to kill Messala, to kill the Roman.

28:01 The reason why he's on that mission is because

28:06 he believes that the Roman Empire did him wrong

28:09 and someone should tell them no and, and someone

28:13 should draw a line. Now, what's interesting about Ben Hur,

28:17 which you don't see in this book, because Victor Hugo, and we're going to talk

28:20 about the bishop here in a minute. I'm glad you brought that up. We're going

28:23 to talk about the bishop here in a minute. But in Ben Hur,

28:29 there ex. The. The characters experience what in biblical terms is

28:33 called a theophany. That's when God basically, or the divine

28:36 reaches into history and says, hey, I'm here, and then steps back out.

28:40 Right? And so Lou Wallace structured the interactions with Jesus

28:44 as this theophany that was happening, happening about four or five times

28:47 in, in the book. Hugo does exactly the same thing,

28:52 but he does it with, and this is the key difference. He does

28:56 it with social reform. And he believes that

29:00 social reform is the way in which

29:04 romantically held social reform, by the way, is the way in which

29:08 you will establish moral authority and to your point, get

29:12 the institutions to what they. To live up to what they say.

29:17 And I think this is hugely important for leaders to understand. And it runs

29:21 across numerous books that we've covered on this show.

29:25 And there's also A sense of heroism here, which I want to revisit sort of

29:28 at the end that goes along with this and I think is missing from a

29:31 lot of human rights activism in our time. There's no heroism involved in

29:35 it. It's more like trolling or gaslighting or

29:39 just, you know, throwing grease in. Or not. Sorry, grease. Throwing sand

29:42 in gears to. To make a problem. Not because

29:46 you actually want to see things change. Although people mouth the words of wanting to

29:49 see things change, but they don't actually romantically believe it. And

29:53 this is the disjuncture that I think, you know,

29:57 Les Mis lays out so. Lays out so so nakedly.

30:00 Right. As a book. Yeah. It's not just the

30:04 vision statement, it's the actual embodiment of the

30:07 vision. Correct. And you know, it's not

30:11 just virtue signaling and then patting me on the back

30:15 because I say the right thing. It's actually

30:18 demonstrating that what you state is actually going to be

30:22 the good thing. Right, right, right.

30:26 And do good for society. Right. Well,

30:30 and the French also, because they had the revolution, they had this idea

30:33 and this is the part of the other part of it that rocked the continent.

30:36 They had this idea that. And this is hugely important in the

30:40 America. America. Sort of. Not sort

30:44 of. America's Constitution and Declaration of Independence

30:47 allowed us to avoid the excesses of the French Revolution. Because that could have

30:51 very easily happened here. Yes. Oh my God.

30:55 It could have very easily happened here. Because our passions are the same as.

30:59 The same as. French Republic. Yeah, exactly.

31:05 Know what? Do you have a republic if you can keep it. Right. Okay.

31:12 What the French Revolution proved

31:16 in very naked stark terms was that.

31:19 And this is where liberty and egalitae and fraternity come

31:23 from that if the king,

31:27 who is set up as the avatar of God on earth can be gotten,

31:31 then everything's open to everybody. If we. The second

31:35 they beheaded that king like that was it, game on.

31:39 And that's what all of the rulers of Europe got. They got that

31:42 viscerally. That was the message that they sent out.

31:46 And then to top it off, which

31:50 Victor Hugo talks about this, we're going to talk about Napoleon today. Then to top

31:53 it off, you have Napoleon, which. That's a whole other kind of. I mean that's

31:57 a. That's the second half back half a conversation. That's a whole other kind of

32:00 thing. I'm fascinated by Napoleon. That dude was real

32:03 interesting. But you. That

32:07 was like a one, two punch to the continent of Europe. And

32:11 I don't think the European. I don't think European powers have

32:15 ever really fully recovered from that. They haven't.

32:19 They're still struggling. Yeah. That America or the

32:22 US benefited from not having their history,

32:27 you know, because we did kind of Greenfield what a republic

32:31 was, you know. No kidding,

32:35 right? Yeah, yeah.

32:39 Let me, let me go into, let me go into Les Mis here. I want

32:42 to bring up the point because Libby, we talked about the bishop and this is,

32:45 this is a good time to sort of bring this up.

32:50 So the impact of

32:55 religion on the French mindset,

32:59 specifically Catholicism on the French mindset.

33:03 And I'm talking the pre. Well, no, even down to today, but the

33:06 Pre World War II French mindset, the. The

33:10 19th century conception of Catholicism, the 19th century

33:14 conception of religion and the.

33:17 And religion as an estate in France re. I mean,

33:21 redounds through this book. And so I want to

33:25 bring up some ideas here. I want to point

33:29 out some things about monsignor

33:32 bienvenue, chapter 12, book one of

33:36 Les Miserables.

33:40 And I quote, there is almost always a squad of young abbes around

33:44 a bishop, just as there is a flock of young officers around a general. By

33:48 the way, one other point just want to make if you read this book, the,

33:51 the turns of phrase in here are amazing. Victor

33:55 Hugo, again, amazing writer. It flows really

33:58 fast. You'll be. You'll be 50 pages in. You won't even realize where the time

34:02 went back to the book.

34:06 They are what the charming St. Francis de Saul somewheres calls white

34:10 billed priests. Every profession has its aspirants who make up the

34:13 cortege of those who are at the summit. No power is without its

34:17 worshipers, no fortune without its court. The secrets of the future

34:21 revolve around the splendid present. Every capital, like every general,

34:24 has its staff. Every influential bishop has his patrol of undergraduates,

34:28 cherubs who make the rounds and keep ordering the bishop's palace and who

34:32 stand guard over the monsignor's smile. To

34:36 please a bishop puts a foot in the stirrup

34:39 for a sub deacon. Each must make his own way. The

34:43 apostolate never disdains the cannocate.

34:47 And as elsewhere, there are top brass in the church. There are rich miters,

34:51 there are bishops who stand well at court, wealthy, well endowed, adroit, accepted in

34:54 the world. Knowing how to pray, no doubt, but also knowing how to ask favors

34:58 with few scruples about making themselves the viaduct of advancement for a whole

35:01 diocese. Hyphens between the sacristy and diplomacy.

35:05 More abbes than priests, prelates rather than bishops. Lucky are they

35:09 who get near them. Men of influence as they Are they reign

35:12 about them, upon their families and favorites. And upon all these young men

35:16 who please them. Fat parishes, sinecures, archdeaconates,

35:20 chaplaincies and cathedral functions. Steps towards a

35:23 bishop's dignities. In advancing themselves, they advance

35:27 their satellites. It is a whole solar system in motion. The rays of their

35:31 glory, their retinue purple, their prosperity scatters its crumbs to

35:35 those behind the scenes. In the guise of nice little promotions. The larger the

35:38 diocese of the patron, the larger the curacy of the favorite. Or for the

35:42 favorite. And then there is Rome. A bishop who could become an

35:45 archbishop. An archbishop becomes cardinal, leads you to the conclave.

35:49 You enter into the rota. You have the pallium there you are an auditor,

35:53 you are a chamberlain, you are a monsignor. And from the

35:57 grandeur to eminence there is only a step. And between eminence and holiness

36:01 there is nothing but the smoke of a ballot.

36:05 Every cowl may dream of the tiara. In our day, the priest is the

36:09 only man who could regularly become a king. And what a king. The supreme king.

36:13 So what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary. How many blushing

36:17 choir boys, how many young abbes have the ambitious dairy maids pail

36:20 of milk on their heads? Who knows how easily ambition disguises

36:24 itself under the name of calling, possibly in good faith, and deceiving itself

36:28 in sanctimonious confusion.

36:31 Monsignor. Beyond venue, a humble, poor private person was not counted among

36:35 the rich miters. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests around

36:38 him. We have seen in that in Paris he did not fit in. No glorious

36:42 future dreamed of alighting upon this solitary old man. No budding ambition was

36:45 foolish enough to ripen in his shadow. His cannons and his grand vicars were good

36:49 old men, rather common, like himself, and like him, immured in that diocese

36:53 from which there was no road to promotion. And they resembled their

36:57 bishop. With this difference that they were finished and he was perfected.

37:02 The impossibility of getting ahead under Monsignor Bienvenue was so plain

37:05 that, fresh from the seminary, the young man ordained by him procured

37:09 recommendations to the Archbishop of A or of Auch and left

37:12 immediately. For after all, we repeat, men like advancement.

37:16 A saint addicted to abnegation is a dangerous neighbor. He

37:20 is very likely to infect you with an incurable poverty, a stiffening of

37:24 the articulations necessary to advancement, and in fact, more

37:27 renunciation than you would like. And men flee from this

37:30 contagious virtue. Hence the isolation of Monsignor

37:34 Bienvenue. We live In a sad society, succeed.

37:38 That is the advice which falls drop by drop from the overhanging

37:42 corruption.

37:47 Damn.

37:53 Unbelievable. Look,

37:58 I was listening to Orson Welles on the Third man the

38:02 other day. I love that old radio show. And he was running

38:05 around trying to be a.

38:09 Some type of. He's trying to scam some people, of course, because

38:13 he's hustling. And he was portraying himself not

38:17 as a religious person, but as a, like a, like an Amir or like a

38:20 viceroy or some, some sort of royalty. Right. Something with a sir on

38:24 it. And then like some little kid basically upends

38:28 his entire scam and it turns out that this little kid is actually an earl,

38:32 which is great. It's a great. It was a great little thing.

38:36 And, and so we've covered the Third man on this show earlier this, this, this

38:39 season. You should go check out that episode if you haven't listened to that already.

38:42 And one of the lines in it at the end when Orson Welles does a

38:45 little wrap up, he says, as Harry Lime, he

38:49 says, the wages of sin are not nearly high enough to justify the overhead.

38:54 And, and as I read that piece,

38:58 great line that. Oh my God, it's so good. Wells was so good.

39:01 I think of the bishop here. And not because the

39:05 bishop was sinful, actually, the way Victor Hugo sets up the

39:09 bishop. He's the only more

39:12 genuinely moral man in the

39:15 entire corpus of the book. Yeah.

39:21 Monsignor Bienvenue. Is the.

39:25 Is he the. How would you frame this, Libby? Is he the pebble that pushes.

39:29 That pushes Jean Valjean down. Down the, down the.

39:33 Down the mountain? Or is he. Or is

39:36 he the. The hand that pushes him? Is he the pebble or the hand?

39:40 Yeah, it's the hand. It's the slight. Okay. You know,

39:43 adjustment that's just needed to put you on course.

39:47 You know, he had two paths to take. Right,

39:51 right, right. And he just eased him to the right

39:54 versus Right. Right. Yeah, right. And

39:58 the soft touch. Just a soft touch. And he did it in. But he couldn't

40:02 have done it without having the moral authority. And he. And he sets

40:06 up the bishop because this is what I mean. He sets up the monsignor. This

40:08 is who he starts with. He opens the book with Devon Senior, like you would

40:10 think the book would open with Jean Valjean and Javert and

40:14 Fentin and all these characters and their tragedy and da, da, da. No,

40:18 he starts with the moral authority. He starts with

40:21 the moral guy. And you know, he,

40:25 he ab. To his point about abnegation, he totally

40:29 and completely. He makes him

40:33 not Right for this world. That's what it is. Like he made the bishop. Right.

40:36 Not right for this. And that's the only

40:40 way, I think Hugo could

40:45 justify, I guess, that morality.

40:52 Because all these other characters are, to his point, they're

40:55 ambitious and scheming and

40:59 grasping. Even Jean Valjean scheming and

41:02 grasping. Right. Even cassette. Right. Like

41:06 scheming and grasping. Right. Grabbing for something, whether that's love

41:10 or attention or whatever their

41:14 perspective of legal righteousness is. I'm looking at you, Javert.

41:17 But like all these other characters are grasping and scheming and ambitious. But not the

41:21 monsignor. He doesn't want

41:24 anything. And you can't do anything with a man like that.

41:30 No, that's the problem. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's why

41:35 they try. Yeah. You know, they don't want

41:38 someone who believes in, like, life after death, who isn't a fear,

41:42 who isn't afraid of death, you know, who isn't afraid of having

41:46 nothing. Right. Because, you know, because you can't control that person.

41:50 Right. But I think

41:54 you would have a. Yeah. Without. Without the

41:58 decision to.

42:02 To get, you know, to give Valjean, you know, the candlesticks and,

42:06 you know, and all that. You wouldn't have that decision point

42:10 so clearly demarked. It wasn't even decision point, it was an action.

42:14 You know, you saw Beljan just starting to, you know, well,

42:17 you believe I'm a thief. I'm a thief. You know, I have no other

42:21 choice. You've given me. You've given me no other choice. You know, and we hear

42:25 about this for, you know, low income, you know, low income, you

42:29 know, people, when. People when no one has a belief in you

42:33 and you're told you're a thief and you're not, you know, and

42:37 just, you know, 20 years for, you know, in prison

42:40 for taking. Stealing a slice of bread. And then,

42:44 yeah, it was a five year sentence that turned into 20 because you kept trying

42:48 to escape, you know, and then afterwards,

42:52 you know, you hear this with convicts now, you know,

42:55 afterwards you have a yellow card that says, I'm a thief. I'm a

42:59 thief. And everyone just treats you a

43:02 certain way until that one person

43:06 doesn't and sees the glimmer in you and sees the hope

43:10 and gives you the chance to redeem yourself and, you

43:13 know, and not even with him, but just in life. Yeah,

43:18 I talk a lot about small moments can change

43:21 the trajectory and it's in another person's life,

43:25 and this is an example of that. Except my moments

43:29 are even smaller. It's giving a person, you know,

43:33 someone who maybe is in line in front of you at the grocery store who's

43:38 being extremely mean to, to those around them

43:42 and you just give them a smile, maybe let them go in front of you

43:47 and you have no idea why that person is the way they are.

43:50 It could just be they've had a really bad day or they were just

43:54 fired. But by showing them a

43:58 moment of grace, you might knock them out of their

44:01 moment and they return to who they,

44:05 you know, who they are in their soul for the remainder of the

44:09 day. And that may be that they treat their children that,

44:12 you know, better at the end of the day than they would have if they

44:15 come home still angry and feeling like the world is out to get them.

44:19 But regardless, you know, this is one of those small

44:23 moments where someone saw him as other than a

44:26 thief and gave him the grace

44:31 to show him, you know, that, you know, to show,

44:35 show him grace. And with that he made the decisions to invest

44:38 and build a business and then give, you know,

44:42 help others to prosper as much as you can

44:46 in those days. But it's still that same idea, so

44:49 small without this moment of grace. And it is interesting that

44:53 has to be given by someone of the church. But if that,

44:57 it probably has the most power because you can make the

45:01 assumption that they had no alternative, you know,

45:05 agenda. Yeah. To use all of our common

45:08 vernacular. Right. Yeah. Yeah. In ways that

45:12 things are being positioned nowadays, like he was giving grace, he did the right

45:15 thing. And for the rest of his life he did the right thing

45:21 because that's who, who he was, you know, like he wouldn't

45:24 let someone hang wrongly for being thought of, of being

45:28 him, you know. Right. Yeah. But, well,

45:32 that whole tussle that he goes through, that long dark

45:36 night of the soul, right. Where he's, you know, trying to decide what is he

45:39 going to do. The way Hugo describes the,

45:43 that moral not dilemma,

45:47 that moral wrestling, it put me in mind of,

45:53 put me in mind in the book of Genesis when Jacob

45:56 wrestles with the angel. Right. Or, or in

46:00 some cases, you know, depending upon what your, what your translation of

46:04 the Bible is, you'll see that he wrestled with God or he wrestled with

46:09 Jesus. Right. You know, it was Jesus. Anyway, so he's

46:12 wrestling and it, it put me in. Or Jean

46:16 Valjean's wrestling put me in mind of that

46:20 moment. And I do think. No, I think I don't. So Hugo,

46:24 you know, knew the Bible, he knew all the corpus of that and

46:28 how that impacted and engaged with

46:31 literature. He also knew classic literature. He knew all of the things, right?

46:35 And so he brought all of that to the table here in Les Mis. But

46:38 then he turns it into something

46:42 very specific and very,

46:46 very French in a, in a, in an environment

46:50 where. And this is the other thing. Now I want to talk about poverty in

46:53 an environment where poverty that we

46:57 can't imagine is just the standard.

47:00 Exactly. Yeah. Like, so the

47:04 Thenardines, right? The, the, the,

47:07 the family that Fentine leaves cassette with.

47:13 Unbelievable to me. Like, I, I'm reading this and I'm going.

47:18 I mean, I know these things happen today. I'm not naive.

47:22 But it wasn't, it's not the norm today. It's not the norm today,

47:26 right? Like if, if you're reading this. And actually it's interesting. So as I

47:30 was reading this book because it's taken me a few months to sort of

47:34 go through it. Started reading this back in February,

47:38 in, in March, I went to a, went

47:42 to a speech and debate tournament. My daughter is involved in speech, debate. I went

47:45 to one of her tournaments and one of the parents there

47:48 is from France and she saw me

47:52 reading Les Mis and she came over

47:56 and she was like, oh, yeah, I read that. I did the audio version of

47:58 that book because I couldn't, I couldn't read it. And I was in my car,

48:01 whatever, and I, and she's like, I'm from France.

48:05 And then she's like, that book is amazing. And so we had a whole hour

48:08 long conversation about the book and I asked her this

48:12 question. I said, as a French speaker and as a person, you

48:15 know, French native, what does this book mean to you? And

48:19 she said, this book is the history. It's part of the history of our country.

48:23 It is the history of our country. And she said, she was, she's in

48:27 her, she's in her 60s. She said that the way

48:30 that, the way that the poverty and the social

48:34 climate is, is, is structured. She said, oh yeah, we learned about all this in

48:38 history. I mean, that's just the way things were,

48:42 you know. And she said it so casually.

48:47 And I was struck by, as I often am when I talk to people

48:51 from other countries who are not Americans, who are now, who have now

48:55 chosen to live in America. And then we wind up talking about French politics. By

48:58 the way, she's not a fan of the current prime minister and is very

49:02 desirous of voting against him, but she's like, I have to go back to France.

49:05 I have to live there for like three months so I could vote. And she's

49:07 like, it's not worth it. Like, just leave. She's like, she's just trying to get

49:09 her family out. She's just leave. Man's an idiot. Just go. Anyway, point

49:13 is, I'm struck once again by

49:18 how,

49:24 How the things that, that folks from other countries

49:27 just casually accept as the way of life.

49:31 We've basically said we don't have to

49:35 do that and so we're going to go off and do something different.

49:38 You're also seeing this with like the Europeans that are coming over and folks from

49:41 other countries as well that are coming over to the, the World cup venues

49:45 now with the FIFA World cup going on. Oh my God, this is like the

49:49 World Cup. Honestly, like this is the

49:52 best thing that could have happened to America at this

49:56 time in a while. Like not like

50:01 Europeans and folks from all over other places, all over the world

50:04 are coming to America and interacting with Americans and, and

50:08 seeing that it's not all of what you see on TikTok videos

50:12 and nonsense from the media. Like

50:16 80% of the people in America are not what you see

50:20 online. You know, like

50:23 I watched, I mean I'm not watching any of the games. I saw a game

50:27 in a restaurant and one of the venues was Philadelphia and I was sitting

50:30 there with my wife and I was joking, I was working with my wife. I

50:33 was like, oh yeah, it's Philadelphia. Philly fan gotta like, Philly fan gotta like put

50:37 on a show now because Philadelphia is

50:41 the worst sports city. Yes, I did say it. Sorry to all my fans

50:44 of Philadelphia, but it is the worst sports city on the east coast. Yeah. Bar

50:48 none. Like it beats Boston by a country mile

50:52 because intellectual enough to make that

50:57 this Philly fan don't care. I mean the story. Yeah,

51:01 yeah. You know, like it's, I think it's one of two.

51:06 Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Eagle Stadium is one of two stadiums in the NFL where there's

51:10 an actual like jail. What's the

51:13 other one? I think it's the Raiders. Raiders. I think it's the Raiders. Yeah, I

51:17 think it's the Raiders. The Raiders is the other one. I might be wrong on

51:19 this. You can, it can be fact checked on this. But yeah, Philly has a

51:23 lockup like of course. And nobody,

51:26 nobody goes, oh no, that's weird. That's out. No, no, that actually that

51:30 tracks, that tracks with that town. No, that's fine. But, but you know, you

51:34 see the World cup venues and you see these international players

51:37 and these international visitors and America is

51:41 just being America. We're just hanging out Doing the thing we've always done.

51:45 And they are here finding out on a visit

51:52 we're not what their politicians tell you, what the

51:56 media tells you. But I actually think it's analogy also

51:59 for the big US cities and people who live in those cities,

52:03 if they were to actually start participating beyond their,

52:08 beyond where they live, they might actually see how great America is

52:12 too. Exactly, exactly, exactly. It

52:15 is super fabulous. And it's always takes those

52:19 wake up calls, you know, for people to go, oh my

52:23 gosh, like if I actually just get out of, you know,

52:27 the news and the politicians that go travel and talk to people, it's

52:30 like, wow, the world isn't, you know, isn't even half as

52:34 bad. Or, you know, you could, you

52:38 could, you could read Les Mis and watch how Hugo

52:42 describes the grinding poverty that creates the tragedy

52:45 and go, oh my God, yes, we have poor people in this

52:49 country, but we would never, I won't say we

52:53 would never. The level of outcry that

52:57 there would be if we had

53:00 a situation like what happened with Fantine, like her

53:04 entire arc of her life. The level of

53:07 outcry against that would be

53:11 unbelievable if that were happening now. And

53:14 I'm not saying that, that we're better. I'm saying to Libby's point,

53:18 it's just, it's about, it's about the evolution of civilization. Evolution of civilization,

53:22 yes. Right. But, yes, but what I actually found really interesting when you

53:25 were conveying what the woman who left her country

53:29 and came to the US was saying is like, well, that's just the

53:33 way it is. It also reminds me, you know,

53:37 that's, you know, the French history is, that's

53:41 the way it is. But there's a level of kind of

53:44 acceptance that's okay. And you know, and

53:48 I want to double click on that from a nuanced perspective because I

53:52 remember when LA was starting to seek crime rates, you know,

53:55 rise quite a bit. And this was

53:59 like 2021, 2022. And one of the famous actors

54:03 is like, it's a city. Like, that's what happens,

54:07 you know, so when you have extremely low expectations,

54:11 you start to dismiss, you

54:14 know, the things that need to be hap. You know, expectations

54:18 for people. That's what I think about like these, you know, the homeless

54:22 issue and, you know, and that I

54:25 bring up a lot in California because to

54:29 me it's immoral to allow

54:33 like, you know, people to live like that for their own,

54:37 you know, for their own being. It's not a gift to them

54:41 because they want to just be Partying and living outside.

54:45 It's actually

54:48 inhuman to not wish better conditions for them,

54:52 to not provide better conditions for them and to ignore,

54:56 you know, that we can actually help them

55:00 by, you know, by bringing them inside and cleaning them and

55:04 giving them proper food and helping them with mental issues and that

55:08 type of thing. So it's just kind of this.

55:12 It's just kind of the laissez faire

55:16 taken to a far extreme because you don't have higher

55:19 expectations of humanity.

55:23 Well, let me. Okay, let me ask you this question.

55:26 We just watched the LA mayoral race occur.

55:30 Yes. And I'm not going to get into

55:33 the race itself. I'm not going to get into any of that. That's

55:37 not the thing that we do on this show. Going to worry about it. Right.

55:41 Instead, what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask this question,

55:44 out of the candidates who won

55:49 the race for LA Mayor, not the run the

55:53 race, run the primary to run for LA Mayor, out of

55:57 the candidates that are in that. That democratically

56:00 controlled city. Okay. Who is

56:04 going to have the moral authority to say,

56:09 as Hugo has done in Les Miz through his characters,

56:14 that this cannot stand is. I don't see Karen Bass

56:18 doing that. No, you see,

56:21 you see talking points

56:25 sure. Don't reflect what would actually

56:29 help individuals like affordability. Like, I

56:33 hear affordability. Right. But I don't tell you,

56:37 I don't hear a recognition of what's causing it to not be

56:40 affordable. Right. Being addressed. It's more

56:44 about we'll just tax more so that we can

56:48 buy versus we have building codes that are

56:52 extremely expensive. Like, you know.

56:55 Yeah. There's one famous podcaster, Adam Carolla, who is

56:59 why it's showing the rebuilding of a home down on the beach.

57:03 And that home was on stilts, just like Venice's

57:08 for, you know, for 70. It was on stilts for 70 years. And the only

57:12 thing that took it out was a fire, but not the water

57:17 and all that. And now that home has to be

57:20 built. The foundation for that home costs

57:24 like a couple million dollars. And it's all pillars

57:28 that are, you know, pillars that are being steel pillars that

57:32 have to go into the ground. And then, you know, there's things that they're concerned

57:35 about from a rain from a water perspective, which I get. But it was

57:39 good enough from a safety perspective with the pillars

57:43 with the wood pilings. So when you

57:47 don't hear. When you just hear talking points, which is what.

57:51 When I watch Hugo's evolution,

57:54 it's the difference between you Know, the monarch and

57:58 Napoleon keep saying, this is what we're going to do for you, but not

58:01 delivering. When you have basins, when you have base needs that

58:05 need to be met and they keep promising, but they're not who

58:08 goes, like the government isn't going to be the answer.

58:12 And when I listen to, and you know, the

58:16 single government that's controlled, been controlling that state, hasn't

58:19 addressed all of their solutions,

58:23 don't actually seem to address the actual problem.

58:27 And then you have another candidate whose solutions actually

58:31 are getting to the root causes like mental illness, you know,

58:36 and building codes and, you know, the

58:40 things that are actually, you know, building codes and not enough people to

58:43 help with inspections. And, you know, so

58:47 that's. That to me, is

58:51 moral authority because, you know, because

58:55 you're actually getting to the solutions that are going to solve

58:59 problems. And when you see the person who has solutions that

59:03 address a root cause and then.

59:10 They're challenged by the power structure,

59:15 you do have to ask, you know, who has the moral

59:18 authority? It's the person typically who's getting pushed out.

59:22 Right. Who's losing everything but still wants to speak.

59:27 Well, well, you brought it up, you brought it up earlier. And I think it's,

59:30 it's worth repeating yet again that institutions should do what they say they're going to

59:34 do. Right, Exactly. And, and someone, not someone.

59:38 One of the things in democracy, small D democracy,

59:42 is all of the people are

59:46 responsible nominally for ensuring that

59:50 the institutions do well. All the institutions do what they say they're going to

59:53 do. Now, in a republic,

59:57 which is what we have in the United States,

1:00:01 we vote for people,

1:00:05 and then those people are the ones that are supposed to make the institutions

1:00:09 do what they say they're going to do. Now,

1:00:13 the people that we vote for

1:00:17 have to have some kind of moral weight. There also

1:00:21 has to be consequences for

1:00:25 failure. And the frustrating

1:00:29 thing, for many Americans over the last 25 years, regardless

1:00:32 of who I talk to, left, right or center, the main

1:00:36 frustration, politically left, politically radically considered, doesn't matter. The

1:00:40 number one frustration is that there are no

1:00:43 seeming consequences for failure.

1:00:47 So if, if your,

1:00:51 if your city has a fire

1:00:55 that could have been prevented if the fire hydrants had water in

1:00:59 them, right. There should

1:01:03 be a penalty, there should be accountability

1:01:07 for that failure. Exactly. I'm going to scale this

1:01:11 up even further, actually. I'm going to use another example.

1:01:15 If you are a politician

1:01:19 and you decide that you're going to comment on

1:01:23 something in the culture and Your

1:01:26 commentary is 180

1:01:30 degrees, as my mother would say, from sideways,

1:01:34 which means it's not relevant. For those of you in Rio

1:01:38 Linda, you, you. There should, there is going

1:01:41 to be. There should be a consequence for that. I'm not

1:01:45 saying that your right to speak should be abrogated. I'm not saying

1:01:49 you should be. Shut up. Yeah, I agree there should be. Right. But there should

1:01:52 be consequences for that. I'm going to scale it up a little further.

1:01:56 If you go to Congress and you were a

1:02:00 $15 an hour barista and after a term

1:02:04 in Congress, one term, you come out a millionaire,

1:02:08 right? There should be consequences for.

1:02:12 There should be accountability for that. I don't get to start at,

1:02:16 at $15 an hour and a year later make a million dollars.

1:02:20 That's not how things work. So

1:02:25 what the frustrating thing is is that there seems to be no consequences for failure.

1:02:29 And Hugo in Les Mis

1:02:33 lays out what the consequences for failure are. He lays out,

1:02:37 and we're going to talk about Napoleon now. He lays out what failure actually

1:02:41 looks like and what it actually means to experience those consequences

1:02:45 and how wide ranging they are for society in our

1:02:48 time. I think for leaders, we have to

1:02:52 realize that at a certain point

1:02:57 the laws of physics just work like the laws of

1:03:01 reality just are what they are. Well, and

1:03:05 this is what, you know, and as you were speaking, I was really thinking about

1:03:08 this really clearly. Like, you know, when

1:03:12 you've scaled up and everything's centralized,

1:03:18 there's op. There's opacity, and it's harder

1:03:22 to trace where a breakdown in moral

1:03:26 authority is. You know,

1:03:29 so there's the. I care about affordability, I care about

1:03:33 affordability. Yet we're not seeing affordability right

1:03:36 addressed, you know, and that's for the common man, the middle class,

1:03:40 you know, lower middle class, middle class and upper class.

1:03:44 And you know, we have to. And one of the reasons we

1:03:48 haven't seen consequences for actions is

1:03:51 because we haven't. You know, in theory, folks are saying

1:03:55 our vote matters. We're

1:03:59 told it is. But there's so much opacity

1:04:04 to the system that I can't, I can't

1:04:08 trust that your moral authority is actually

1:04:11 translated, that you actually have deserved moral authority.

1:04:15 You're telling me every vote matters and

1:04:19 you're counting them all fairly and

1:04:22 everything is legal. You know, there's.

1:04:26 There's too much opacity in the system

1:04:30 and too many places for that trust to break down.

1:04:34 And I mean by that with yoke, you know, if let

1:04:38 make it very, very simple. Decentralized accountability.

1:04:42 Yeah, we all vote the same day. We show our id.

1:04:46 There's two people watching the system,

1:04:51 watching people take their votes, take the id. That to me is

1:04:55 a demonstration that those who are

1:04:58 saying democracy matters and your

1:05:02 vote matters. It's visible to

1:05:06 me that it does because of what I

1:05:09 see, my reality, what

1:05:13 I see, not what I hear. And so

1:05:17 we've seen now we're, now we're told

1:05:21 the system is fair even though you can,

1:05:25 in California you can receive

1:05:29 votes up to 20 days after the election

1:05:32 as long as it has a written post date on it, not even

1:05:36 a

1:05:39 UPS or use United States Postal Service stamp on it.

1:05:43 If it's believed that that date may be correct, then you can accept

1:05:47 it. So you put, started to put

1:05:50 too many barriers to my trust

1:05:55 in the way and that's why you start to get a populist uprising

1:05:59 is because you no longer are deserving of the moral

1:06:03 authority that you want were because reality

1:06:07 is no longer lined up with your words.

1:06:10 Correct? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And,

1:06:14 and you know what we,

1:06:19 Populism is a dirty word these days, right. Just like

1:06:23 nationalism is a dirty word, you know,

1:06:27 but it's only a dirty word to people

1:06:31 who in power who have benefited from the

1:06:34 opacity, they've skated by on accountability,

1:06:38 they've gotten paid and not just paid in money. They

1:06:42 get paid in status and in attention and in power

1:06:46 and in influence. Money is like the least

1:06:49 worrisome thing. Honestly, in tribalism,

1:06:52 identity is the number one thing that we can control.

1:06:56 Yeah. When you talk about cults, identity is the driver

1:07:00 of cult like behavior, Right? Exactly, exactly,

1:07:04 exactly. And, and so, you know, and then when

1:07:08 you question the opacity or you

1:07:11 question the lack of transparency or you question the accountability,

1:07:16 you are then put in the box of,

1:07:20 and I'm going to use this term, an election denier or, or,

1:07:24 or you're shuffled off to the darker corners of the

1:07:27 Internet where all the crazy people hang out. Because who couldn't

1:07:31 possibly believe that our, all of our elections are free and fair.

1:07:35 But watch what, but watch what is happening. A person who

1:07:38 has courage of their convictions and is saying

1:07:42 something that will ostracize them for society,

1:07:46 right? Like yeah, yeah, people are saying

1:07:50 things that could have them lose their jobs, can have them lose their position

1:07:54 in their community. You, that's

1:07:58 why a populism resonates is because

1:08:02 there's so much sacrifice that comes with like

1:08:06 skating things that could get you jailed or lose your

1:08:10 job, that type of, that type of thing. The reason

1:08:14 why, you know,

1:08:19 the reality star resonated

1:08:22 is because he was Actually talking to the things that we saw every day

1:08:26 that everyone was telling us doesn't exist.

1:08:30 And we're working on it. And this is how

1:08:33 wasn't translating where these ephemeral intellectual

1:08:37 ideas that weren't translating into reality. And then you had someone who was

1:08:41 actually dealing with the things that talking about the things that we

1:08:45 saw every day that we'd been hearing for five,

1:08:48 10 years were supposed to be addressed and weren't. And he

1:08:52 actually seemed to have solutions that a practical

1:08:55 mind said, yeah, that would work. Right. You know, those who

1:08:59 live in reality. And so the

1:09:03 moral authority, you know, like the, the

1:09:07 religious individual, the bishop, was actually

1:09:10 acting in reality because he understood human

1:09:13 motivation. Yes. And he

1:09:17 understood how shame

1:09:21 could turn someone and continued shaming of someone

1:09:25 could turn them down a path into a life of crime

1:09:29 versus a moment giving someone grace

1:09:33 could create the goodwill and the desire

1:09:38 to help and do good. That's much more

1:09:41 powerful than anything else. You know, so

1:09:45 understanding human nature,

1:09:50 authority is really, is very important because it's not the

1:09:53 vision statement, it's the actual

1:09:58 operating and living by the

1:10:02 principles that you purport to be true. You purport to be true.

1:10:06 Yep, absolutely. Yeah. My. It.

1:10:09 Yeah. And Hugo, and as what I.

1:10:13 Hugo learned this and he could speak to it so beautifully

1:10:17 because he'd struggled with every stage of

1:10:21 this himself. Yes, yes, yes. Well, and

1:10:25 he. This is why

1:10:29 I, you know, I said this already, but I'll say it again. His characters are

1:10:32 fully realized. They are three dimensional. Even

1:10:36 the Thenardines who are, who are sort of sub villains,

1:10:40 you know, they are fully realized. Fantine is fully

1:10:44 realized. Cossette is fully realized,

1:10:48 the Monsignor fully realized.

1:10:51 Even the, even the

1:10:56 young man who were the

1:11:00 group of girls that Fantine was a part of, and then the young

1:11:04 men that were their lovers and they're cavorting around or whatever. And then of course,

1:11:07 you know, he knocks Fantine up and then disappears into the night. Does

1:11:11 the Johnny Appleseed move. Even that guy is fully

1:11:14 realized. Like he gives, he gives him a beginning, a middle and an end. And

1:11:18 actually the end is that he became like some low level mayor in some town

1:11:21 or whatever. And, and

1:11:24 there's no castaway characters in this book.

1:11:28 Every one of them is so tightly written and so, so fully

1:11:32 realized. And I think they're fully realized because we're going to

1:11:36 turn the corner here and talk about Napoleon and then wrap up, at least for

1:11:40 today, but they're fully realized because I

1:11:43 think Hugo as a romanticist,

1:11:47 and I say this on the show as myself or I

1:11:51 tagged myself with this. He was a fan of human beings. He actually

1:11:54 liked people. He actually thought people had potential.

1:11:59 He did. I, I see. I. He did. And I think that I, I agree

1:12:02 with you. Okay, so we have Javert, who believes in the letter

1:12:06 of the law. Of the law, yes. Right. We have

1:12:10 the, the Thenardier,

1:12:14 a criminal. And I'm going to be a criminal, you know, and even though you

1:12:17 thought I was a good man, you know, and I benefited from it, I'm still

1:12:21 going to be a criminal. Right. And then you have Jean Valjean, who actually,

1:12:25 in my mind, he start. He did a crime out of love,

1:12:29 right. Like for his sister because he wanted to feed her and her family.

1:12:33 He did a crime out of love in the. Yeah.

1:12:37 And I don't believe you should, but when you're looking at the

1:12:40 pyramid of, you know, Maslov pyramid of needs, if you don't have that

1:12:44 base level met, like, people have to eat, you

1:12:48 know, yes, things are going to happen. But he

1:12:51 was like, well, maybe I'm not love. This is, this is Libby's

1:12:55 interpretation. You know, when he's told over and over and over again he's a criminal

1:12:58 and he's going to have this scarlet letter for the rest of his life.

1:13:02 He's like, they keep telling him, no love, no love, you're a

1:13:06 criminal. He's like, well, then I act like one, you know, kind of like, you

1:13:09 know, defiantly. But then someone shows grace. He's like, I

1:13:13 can see that love. You know, those are my interpretations of

1:13:17 the, of the bishop, but I can see that love,

1:13:20 and you have it in you, and I'm going to help you by doing the

1:13:23 right thing. And so that's what drives him,

1:13:27 you know, Valjean, through the rest of the, the rest of the book

1:13:32 is, you know, I'm going to do the right thing. And he does do the

1:13:35 right thing, and it's kind of out of love and, you know,

1:13:39 getting him out. Out of those base needs

1:13:43 by building a business and being able to support himself and

1:13:46 to help others so that he's not having to act out of base.

1:13:50 Base needs. Base needs. But he's the most human

1:13:54 and redemptive character that I think, you know,

1:13:58 Hugo's using as a model of even though we've sinned. Even

1:14:02 though you've sinned, you can redeem yourself and make the right

1:14:05 path. Make the right choice and make the right choice. Yes. And it's. And

1:14:09 it's human beings that have to be involved in relationship with each other in order

1:14:13 just realize that we're flawed. But you don't have to accept that moment of

1:14:16 flaw. And you know, if small moments are big, you got to

1:14:20 continue to move forward and redeem yourself. Yes, absolutely.

1:14:25 Okay, let me, let me go to something that was that

1:14:28 I just, just absolutely struck me

1:14:32 in. Well, one of the many things that struck me in this book.

1:14:37 The.

1:14:42 So we go to cassette, the book one.

1:14:46 So the chapter on cassette

1:14:49 starts out with a. Probably

1:14:53 the, the best description I had ever read

1:14:57 of the battle at Waterloo,

1:15:01 exactly what happened there. And it opens

1:15:04 up with what you see on the way from Nevillier

1:15:08 Hugomont, talking about the doors and

1:15:11 the orchard. And then June 18, 1815,

1:15:20 I, I, I read these chapters

1:15:24 and then he goes into a. The quid obscurum of battles.

1:15:28 I'm just reading the chapter titles. 4 o' clock in the Afternoon.

1:15:31 Napoleon in a good Mood. The

1:15:35 Emperor asks the guide La Costa a question, the

1:15:38 Unexpected and the plateau of

1:15:42 Mont St. Jean. And then finally wraps up with

1:15:46 Bad guide for Napoleon, good for Bulow

1:15:50 the Guard and of course the catastrophe.

1:15:54 Now these chapters, these 14

1:15:58 chapters in the first book cover

1:16:01 about 40 pages

1:16:05 and he sums up the entire battle of Waterloo.

1:16:10 And he sums up Napoleon

1:16:15 in the 15th chapter, Cambrone.

1:16:19 And I'm going to, I'm going to read from this and then we're going to

1:16:22 talk about. About a man. I'm fascinated by Napoleon.

1:16:25 Napoleon Bonaparte. Out of

1:16:29 respect to the French reader, the finest word perhaps

1:16:33 that a Frenchman ever uttered cannot be repeated to him. We are

1:16:36 prohibited from applying the sublime to history at our own risk

1:16:40 and peril. We violate that prohibition. Among these giants, then

1:16:44 there was one titan, Cambrone. To speak that

1:16:48 word and then to die. What could be greater? For to accept death is to

1:16:51 die. And it is not this man's fault if in the storm of grapeshot

1:16:55 he survived. The man who won the battle of Waterloo is not

1:16:59 Napoleon put to route nor Wellington giving way at 4 o', clock,

1:17:02 desperate at 5 not blue share who did not fight. The man

1:17:06 who won the battle of Waterloo was Kim Roning.

1:17:11 To burst out with such a word at the thunderbolt that kills you is

1:17:15 victory. To give this answer to disaster,

1:17:18 to say this to destiny, to supply this base for the future lion.

1:17:22 To fling down this reply to the reign of the previous night, to the

1:17:25 treacherous wall at Hugomont, to the sunken road of Ohain, to Grouchy's

1:17:29 delay, to Blucher's arrival to be ironic in the sepulcher,

1:17:33 to act so as to remain Upright after falling, down after

1:17:37 falling. To drown the European coalition in two syllables

1:17:40 privies that the Caesars were already privy to. To make the last

1:17:44 words the first by associating it with the glory of France. To close

1:17:48 Waterloo insolently with a Mardi Gras, to complete

1:17:51 Leonidas with Rabelier. To sum up this victory in one supreme word

1:17:55 that cannot be spoken. To lose the field and to recover history after

1:17:59 this carnage, to have the laugh on his side is

1:18:03 immense. It is an insult to the thunderbolt.

1:18:06 It attains the grandeur of Eschylus.

1:18:10 This word of Cambrones, by the way the word was merde has

1:18:14 the effect of a fracture. It is the breaking of a heart by

1:18:18 scorn. It is a surplus of agony and explosion. Who conquered

1:18:21 Wellington? No, without Blue Share he would have been lost. Blusher.

1:18:25 No, if Wellington had not begun, Blucher could not have finished. This Cambrone

1:18:29 coming at the final hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal

1:18:33 particle of war, senses a lie within a catastrophe

1:18:36 doubly bitter. And at the moment when he is bursting with rage, he is offered

1:18:40 this mockery life. How could he restrain himself?

1:18:45 They are there, all the kings of Europe, the fortunate generals, the

1:18:49 thundering jupiters. They have 100,000 victorious

1:18:52 soldiers. And behind the 100,000amillion. Their guns, with matches

1:18:56 lit, stand open mouthed. They have the Imperial Guard in the Grand Armee

1:19:00 under their feet. They have just crushed Napoleon. And Cambronne alone

1:19:03 remains none. But this earthworm is left to protest. He will

1:19:06 protest. So he looks for a word as one looks for a sword. Froth

1:19:10 comes through his mouth, and this froth is the word.

1:19:14 Faced with this prodigious and mediocre victory, this victory without

1:19:18 victors, the desperate man draws himself up. He suffers his enormity,

1:19:22 but he recognizes it's nothingness. And he does more than spit

1:19:25 on it. Overwhelmed in numbers and material strength, he finds in his

1:19:29 soul a means of expression, excrement, we

1:19:33 repeat. To say that, to do that, to find that is

1:19:36 to be a conqueror, the spirit of great days.

1:19:40 Enter this unknown man. At that fatal moment, Cambrone finds the word

1:19:44 for Waterloo as Rouge de Isle finds the Marseille.

1:19:48 Through an inspiration from above, a breath from the

1:19:52 divine maelstrom passes across these men and they tremble. And the one

1:19:55 sings the supreme song, the other utters the terrible cry, this word

1:19:59 of titanic scorn. The Cambrone throws

1:20:03 out, not merely at Europe in the name of the empire,

1:20:07 that would be but little. He throws it out at the past in the name

1:20:11 of the revolution. It is heard and men recognize in Camerone

1:20:15 the old soul of the giants. It is though Danton was speaking,

1:20:18 or Clebert roaring to this word from

1:20:22 Cambron. The English voice replied, fire. The

1:20:25 batteries flared, the hill trembled. From all those brazen throats went forth a

1:20:29 final terrible vomiting of grapeshot. Vast clouds of

1:20:33 smoke, dusky white in the light of the rising moon, rolled away. And when the

1:20:36 smoke settled, there was nothing left. That formidable remnant was

1:20:40 annihilated. The guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt had

1:20:44 fallen. Hardly could a quivering be detected here and there among the corpses. And

1:20:48 thus the French legions, grander than the Roman legions, expired

1:20:51 at Mont St. Jean on ground soaked in rain and

1:20:55 blood in the somber wheat fields. In the somber wheat fields at

1:20:59 the spot where today, at four in the morning, whistling and

1:21:03 gaily whipping up his horse, Joseph drives by with the mail from

1:21:06 Neuve.

1:21:15 I am a fan of military history. I've read quite a bit of it.

1:21:19 I have never read. I had never read before. I read

1:21:22 this, something like that before. If. If

1:21:26 the. If. And you know what. And I'll tell my story now about Les Miz,

1:21:30 the movie. So this is my story.

1:21:34 When the movie came out with Anne Hathaway a few years ago

1:21:38 and Russell Crowe. Pleasure there. And

1:21:42 I can't remember who was the guy from the Greatest Showman. What's his

1:21:46 name? Wolverine. Wolverine, that guy? Yeah. I

1:21:50 can't think of his name. I can't think of his name right now. It doesn't

1:21:52 matter. But he was Jean Valjean, right? Okay. Big to

1:21:56 do about this movie. My wife was like, oh, we should go see this.

1:22:00 Like, okay, I get in

1:22:04 there, I get my tickets. I, you know, get into the theater. I,

1:22:07 you know, put my seat back and.

1:22:12 And. And Russell Crowe starts singing.

1:22:17 And two hours later I wake up and the whole thing.

1:22:26 And

1:22:30 so when I picked up the book, Les Mis, my wife, remembering this, of course,

1:22:35 asks me, how long is it going to take you to get through this book?

1:22:38 How long are you going to go in this book before you give up? Like,

1:22:41 well, I'll just keep going until, I don't know, until I stop. I don't know,

1:22:43 until the book stops or whatever. And

1:22:47 it is moments, and this is the reason why I bring this up. It is

1:22:50 moments like Waterloo, the description of the Battle of

1:22:53 Waterloo, how he breaks that sucker down over 15 chapters.

1:22:58 That's what I wanted to see in the movie. I

1:23:01 wanted to. That. That's what I wanted. That's it.

1:23:05 That would have. I would have. I Would have stayed awake for that.

1:23:11 Yeah, none of that's in the movie. Instead, we get a whole bunch of other

1:23:13 different things, which is fine. I'm gonna get to something else here. At the end

1:23:16 of our episode here, which actually, like I said, kind of. Kind of opened a

1:23:19 door for me in my head based off of a. Off of

1:23:22 a song that was in. That was from the movie that I heard. I

1:23:26 heard this weekend at a. At a. At a recital that I was at. So

1:23:31 that description, though, of Cambron and the.

1:23:35 And the end of Waterloo, he. How he breaks down the

1:23:38 battlefield and breaks down what happened there.

1:23:42 It was a stunning, stunning

1:23:45 achievement by someone who I don't think ever fired a weapon

1:23:49 at anybody in anger, like, ever. Right.

1:23:54 The familiarity that Hugo had with

1:23:58 Napoleon and how Waterloo was such a

1:24:01 disaster for not just Napoleon, but

1:24:05 I think it was a disaster for the French mindset as well,

1:24:10 that they didn't really fully recover from. And actually being a person

1:24:14 who believes that World War I is the headwaters for all

1:24:17 the nonsense that happened in the 20th century, I now understand

1:24:21 at a deeper level why the French felt

1:24:26 so compelled to continue to throw men into the Western Front

1:24:29 during World War I. Just unbelievable,

1:24:33 the numbers of Frenchmen that died in the Western

1:24:37 Front. And they wouldn't stop throwing those men in there. They

1:24:40 wouldn't. They could have just stopped. They could have just not sent any more men

1:24:44 to the front, but they couldn't do it, because they had

1:24:48 to. And I think this is not. This is not putting something on the French

1:24:51 military mind that wasn't there. They had to erase the shame of

1:24:55 Napoleon's defeated Waterloo. And you would

1:24:58 think that because Waterloo happened, what,

1:25:02 1815. Yeah, so it's 1815. Right.

1:25:07 Battle of Waterloo happened at 1815. You're telling. And

1:25:11 80 years, 90 years later,

1:25:14 they're still dealing with the shame of that. And so they just throw people into

1:25:18 World War I. They just throw the men into the mall. And it's because of

1:25:22 what happened at Waterloo. And that. And that really came home to me with Hugo's

1:25:25 description of what happened. And he doesn't

1:25:29 go into the psychology of Napoleon, thank God. He doesn't

1:25:32 psychologize the trauma. He just says, this is the thing that

1:25:36 happened. He dramatizes it and he

1:25:39 romanticizes it, of course, because he's a romantic romanticist

1:25:43 and a romantic writer, but he doesn't. He doesn't

1:25:47 psychologize it. He doesn't. He doesn't try to. Like.

1:25:51 He doesn't try what a modern novelist would try to do. He doesn't try to

1:25:53 make. Make Napoleon, what do you call it, acceptable

1:25:58 or make his actions understandable.

1:26:01 He doesn't judge Napoleon as being problematic. He just says,

1:26:05 no. I mean, like, these are the vagaries of history. So we were going to

1:26:09 have a battle here, and the thunderbolt's going to fall here.

1:26:12 And the beginning of the decline of the French.

1:26:16 Not even decline. The end of the French Revolution was

1:26:20 at Waterloo. And this is what he wants you to feel. And so it's amazing.

1:26:24 This is just an amazing chapter to me. But what is what

1:26:27 happened from a Napoleon perspective? You

1:26:31 know, for 10. Yeah, for the, what, 15 years

1:26:35 before that, 20 years before that. Yeah. That led to that

1:26:38 culmination.

1:26:42 You mean before Napoleon? Well, no, part of his. As

1:26:46 part of Napoleon's reign. Why would it end like that?

1:26:51 Oh, well, because you have the dynamic

1:26:55 of the French people, which Hugo is definitely

1:26:58 clearly on board with. You have the dynamic of the

1:27:01 institutions, the estates. Right. The first estate, the second state, third

1:27:05 estate, the fourth estate. Right. Which is, of course, their class system,

1:27:09 which they sought to. To, you know, paper over.

1:27:14 But then the. The third leg of that

1:27:18 chair is Napoleon himself. And

1:27:21 so one of the reasons I'm fascinated by. By

1:27:25 Napoleon is because of the ego on that man. Yeah, that's what I

1:27:29 was. I wanted to get. Yeah, the ego on that man was

1:27:33 incredible. Like,

1:27:37 I. I will often say that the things that we

1:27:41 like about people are also the things that.

1:27:45 Or the things that people are good at is the things that often upend them

1:27:49 at the end of the day. Right. So, you

1:27:52 know, my grandmother warned me years ago, God rest her soul, but she warned

1:27:56 me years ago, your mouth's gonna get you in trouble. And she was right. She's

1:27:59 exactly right. My mouth gets me in trouble all the time. Grandma was exactly

1:28:03 correct. But my mouth is also what makes me money.

1:28:07 Yeah. You know, so

1:28:11 you got to take the bitter with the sweet. Right.

1:28:14 Napoleon. What made Napoleon able to see

1:28:18 how the armies of Europe could be fractured and shattered

1:28:23 and could be brought to heel? The thing that

1:28:27 made him see that was also the thing that led to the defeat at Waterloo.

1:28:30 It's the same thing. It was the thing that led to him making a

1:28:34 mistake going into Russia. Like, you don't go into Russia. Everybody knows

1:28:38 this. You don't. You don't go to Russia in the

1:28:42 winter. Sorry. No, no, never,

1:28:45 never. Everybody knows this. This is. This is

1:28:49 not anything unusual. They knew this even then. But

1:28:53 his ego, his ego said, I am Napoleon.

1:28:57 And Napoleon was the first sort of example

1:29:01 of, well, you see it in the picture

1:29:05 of his, of his crowning as emperor where he takes the crown

1:29:09 from the Pope or from the, from the bishop or whoever it is that's going

1:29:12 to crown him and he puts it on his own head himself.

1:29:20 I mean, there you go. That's, that's the guy in a

1:29:24 nutshell. Like that's all you need. And then, but

1:29:27 there's going. And the thing is the knock on effects from that,

1:29:31 it is a thunderbolt. So you're gonna, you're gonna ride the lightning with that guy.

1:29:35 And for a while there, for 15. Yeah,

1:29:39 for 15 years, it was worth it. It was worth it for the French to

1:29:42 ride the lightning like that.

1:29:46 But then. Yeah, it's just, it was hubris ultimately that took them

1:29:49 down and then weakened. The result of the people.

1:29:53 Yeah, it was hubris. It was a fair bit of

1:29:57 narcissism, you know, on Napoleon's part.

1:30:01 I also think that the French people fell in love with Napoleon's ego.

1:30:06 So it's not Napoleon the man.

1:30:11 And, and at this point in, at this point in world history, I mean, 200

1:30:14 years later, he's become a symbol of things. Right? So

1:30:18 he's no longer a human. He was no longer fully, he's no longer a fully

1:30:20 fleshed out human being. He's. He's a symbol now. But

1:30:24 to get to be a symbol, you have to have

1:30:28 an entire group of people. To point about tribalism earlier, you have to have an

1:30:32 entire group of people just fall in love with that, with that, that thing.

1:30:35 And Hugo was in love with. Hugo was in love with Napoleon too,

1:30:39 you know, until he wasn't. Until he wasn't. And then.

1:30:43 But he still wasn't able to look at him clear eyed, you know, because it

1:30:47 comes with all that. Napoleon came with all that baggage. Right. Yeah.

1:30:52 And I get it, you know, was he a military

1:30:55 genius or was

1:30:59 he a person who took advantage of circumstances?

1:31:03 Well, I can tell you from my study of military history and from sort

1:31:07 of what I've looked at over the long course of time.

1:31:11 Most people, most commanders who are considered

1:31:14 geniuses, quite frankly, it's a combination of,

1:31:18 of incredible skill,

1:31:22 focus, ego's in there. And,

1:31:26 and nobody likes to hear it, but it's true luck, right?

1:31:30 Opportunity. It's opportunity. Opportunity favors the prepared mind.

1:31:33 Correct? That's right. Right. So it was just the right time in history.

1:31:37 Right. And you can't,

1:31:41 I mean, you wouldn't really want to replicate a guy like Napoleon, but you

1:31:45 can't. Anyway, Hitler tried.

1:31:49 Yeah. And that didn't work because his ego was.

1:31:53 Was pushed a different direction. He was being pushed by different. His not being pushed.

1:31:56 He was seeking to mold different historical forces.

1:32:00 You know, the.

1:32:05 The. The other piece about

1:32:08 this is Waterloo is presented as a

1:32:12 tragic event. And the

1:32:15 thing that run the line that runs through all of Les Mis

1:32:19 is tragedy. And it's

1:32:23 not tragic in terms of the way we think of. Like,

1:32:27 as I said before, we try to psychologize the tragedy

1:32:30 in our time. Hugo's not doing any of that. He's merely

1:32:34 presenting it as it is and just saying, yes, this is the tragedy.

1:32:39 Here you go. And that's. And that's. And that's why this book will continue to

1:32:42 be read for, like, another 200, 300 years. Because

1:32:47 unlike the Greek, he's what. What Hugo is doing in the

1:32:50 best way is doing

1:32:54 what the Greek classicists do when they present a tragedy. This is

1:32:58 just the way life is. And who can you appeal

1:33:02 to? There's no one to appeal to. This is just life.

1:33:06 And we are consistently, because of our Christianity

1:33:09 in America, that's the thread that runs through all of it. We're

1:33:13 consistently trying to find someone to appeal to for the tragedies

1:33:17 of life. So we talked about homelessness earlier, right, in terms of a

1:33:21 political problem.

1:33:25 Now let me talk about it in terms of a human problem. Some

1:33:29 people are homeless because of tragic circumstances in their

1:33:33 lives. And even if

1:33:36 they had different circumstances, which, by the way, we can't make different

1:33:40 circumstances for them, but we want to, but wanting isn't

1:33:43 enough. Even if they had those different circumstances,

1:33:47 there's no guarantee that their life still wouldn't be a tragedy. This is

1:33:51 the lottery winner who actually wins the lottery and then a year later is

1:33:55 broke. That's because their life is tragic,

1:33:59 and there's nothing you can do about it. It's a series of bad decisions. Yeah,

1:34:03 sure, yeah. And those. And those bad decisions create the

1:34:07 tragedies. And until that

1:34:11 person decides, like

1:34:15 Jean Valjean did, decides

1:34:18 with grace or not, we would love it to be with grace. But until that

1:34:22 person decides to make a different choice,

1:34:27 it's going to continue to be a tragedy. So there's a great character in the

1:34:31 great American television show of the last, like, 25 years, the

1:34:34 Wire. There's a character in there, a drug addict named. Named

1:34:38 Bubs, right? And Bubs

1:34:42 is a drug addict. He's an informer to the cops.

1:34:47 And, you know, they. They.

1:34:51 Bub's arc is one of redemption. He has a

1:34:54 redemptive arc.

1:34:59 But there's A great line he has. I can't remember what season it's in. It

1:35:02 might be in season three of the Wire where he says,

1:35:06 I believe it's to the female cop, if I remember correctly, who's trying to help

1:35:10 him, try to start him, trying to show that grace. Right. Like the monsignor.

1:35:15 Yeah. Bubs. Bub says it's a long way from heaven to here.

1:35:21 And that's true for a lot of people.

1:35:25 Like, if I'm poor,

1:35:29 I live in the same town as people who are rich.

1:35:33 So I can go across the tracks to.

1:35:37 I can't attend that school, but I can go across the tracks to a school

1:35:41 where rich kids are attending and stare through the bars.

1:35:45 No one's going to stop me. We. We have that freedom of movement. Now.

1:35:49 Are the cops going to come along and rouse me? Sure. Okay. Yeah. Are they

1:35:53 going to come along and hassle me? Sure. Yeah. But I can go see it.

1:35:56 I can go see the vision of that. But how

1:36:00 many people cross the tracks one way or another to see

1:36:04 the vision? They don't. That's.

1:36:07 Now, we in our country, in our time, we look at that

1:36:11 as the fault of reality, and we are seeking to remake

1:36:15 that through all of our politics and our arguments and our culture,

1:36:18 because we think that's not fair and that's not nice and that's not

1:36:22 right. And our biggest sin these days is to not be fair or nice

1:36:26 or right. But that's actually not

1:36:29 what Hugo thinks. I don't think. I think. Hugo thinks.

1:36:34 Isn't it a tragedy that you don't go across the tracks and

1:36:37 that's a period at the end of that sentence.

1:36:41 Well, there's. There's just themes of. About personal

1:36:44 accountability, choice and. Yeah, choice and

1:36:48 redemption. And, you know, you can

1:36:52 grow up in a family of criminals and where that was

1:36:57 accepted and say, I'm just a criminal, so that's going to be who I

1:37:00 am. Or you say, I don't want to live that life, and I want

1:37:04 to live, you know, a more moral, empowered life.

1:37:08 You know, it's the same thing as, like, a child who's born to.

1:37:11 Yeah. Whose father was an alcoholic. And you have

1:37:15 two children who are born to families with abusive, you know,

1:37:19 alcoholic fathers. One says, I have no choice but to be

1:37:22 exactly the same way. And the other says, I'm going to do everything in my

1:37:26 power to not be that person. And, you know, the

1:37:30 person who says, I'm going to do everything in my power not to be that

1:37:32 person, you know, tends to have a Better life

1:37:36 because they make sets of decisions to not be the

1:37:40 same as the. To accept a

1:37:44 certain way because it's been pushed on them. And then another.

1:37:47 Yeah, that's. That was the story arc that valjang

1:37:51 could have taken. He could have said, well, I'm a criminal. I'm just going to

1:37:54 be a criminal. Or he said, no, I know that I have that arc of

1:37:58 love. I'm not going to be a criminal. I'm going to do everything

1:38:02 in my life to live a virtuous life. You know, so

1:38:06 what? Well, this is the other. What our country was founded on was the

1:38:09 empowered, accountable individual who

1:38:13 could create their own reality. Right. And,

1:38:17 you know, and we're trying to be turned into. Well, you

1:38:21 can't control it, so we'll turn to others to help you

1:38:24 to live a better. A better life as we dictate, as opposed to just

1:38:28 giving you a place of personal accountability and

1:38:32 choices that can actually help you to live

1:38:36 an empowered and thriving life. Well, and, and, and

1:38:39 Hugo, he as a more Christian right,

1:38:43 as a. Well, and as a romantic. He.

1:38:50 Is a romantic. That is the classical liberal view of life. It is

1:38:54 the classic. Yes, it is the classic. Yes. No, you're right. It is the classical

1:38:57 liberal view of life. And a. A

1:39:01 romantic who is in love with human beings, things exactly as

1:39:05 people, knows what they're capable of, that you can thrive no matter what has

1:39:09 happened to you. Cosette could have also, you know, said,

1:39:13 you know, I'm just going to be a hooker. I'm going to be a criminal.

1:39:16 I'm going to eop. No, she didn't accept. Yeah, well,

1:39:20 she was given opportunities and she took advantage of those opportunities. Right, Correct.

1:39:23 Right. A full life. Well, and let me be very

1:39:27 clear here. Hugo believed in changing the changing of economic.

1:39:32 I agree. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That the economy

1:39:37 had to be better. I mean, this is the other theme with the poverty piece

1:39:40 that runs through Les Mis is the grinding

1:39:43 poverty that is causing people to make these decisions has

1:39:47 to change. And that's in the best sort of line

1:39:51 of thinking from the French Revolution on through Hugo's

1:39:54 life. Now, on the one hand, he did

1:39:58 see tragedies as being periods at the end of the sentence.

1:40:02 He also held intention. This idea that you're talking about,

1:40:05 Libby, of the ability of human beings, if they've ever are given different

1:40:09 economic circumstances, to actually triumph. Now, he didn't have a

1:40:12 solution as to where those economic circumstances or those economic changes are going to

1:40:16 come from. He wasn't a socialist in the way we Think of a

1:40:20 socialist today. He wasn't that person. No, he was a

1:40:23 cat. It was, it was capitalism. Right.

1:40:27 Purest form. Right, Right. Is to do trade.

1:40:31 And you know, you can start at small trade

1:40:34 candlesticks for your machinery. Right. Or build

1:40:37 a, or build a factory in a town that pays people more than like 3

1:40:40 cents. Okay. But you do have to, like, you do have to start with that.

1:40:44 Maslow's pyramid of needs is. You have to first start with

1:40:48 just giving people the basics, you know, food, housing, clean water.

1:40:52 Right, exactly, exactly. Oh, my God. Yeah. The, the filth of

1:40:56 these that is described in here again, shocking

1:40:59 conditions. Right. To someone reading this book in, in

1:41:03 our time, Hugo, though, while he healthy's intention,

1:41:07 ultimately was an optimist. I love the line that he said on August 3 in

1:41:10 his last public address talking about the 20th century. He says, in

1:41:14 the 20th century, war will be dead. The scaffold will be dead.

1:41:18 Hatred will be dead. Frontier boundaries will be dead. Dogmas will

1:41:21 be dead. Man will live.

1:41:28 That's optimistic. Yeah, that's optimistic. Now he

1:41:31 was, he was. If we look, if we look at the 20th century, just in

1:41:35 aggregate, he was not correct. Dogmas

1:41:39 did survive because they're going to. Because you can't kill an idea.

1:41:43 The scaffold not only is not dead, the scaffold is used for a whole variety

1:41:47 of different things that Hugo would find abominable. I think

1:41:50 hatred will be dead. Well, there's a few million, there's 100 million

1:41:54 dead people in, you know, from communism that would probably have something to say

1:41:58 about that. Frontier boundaries will be dead. He's

1:42:02 absolutely true about that. We, with the Internet,

1:42:06 we have, we have pushed the frontier boundaries. Who's absolutely correct about that?

1:42:10 Um, war will be dead. No, war is a condition of the human

1:42:14 heart. And as long as there are human beings who want to

1:42:17 take stuff that other human beings have, we're going to have all this, but

1:42:22 staying with all that. But Hugo was optimistic.

1:42:25 That's what romanticism gives you. He was.

1:42:30 Well, but if you compare, but on a relative basis,

1:42:35 like it's been periods of less war and less

1:42:39 death. Yes. As we had more economic prosperity

1:42:43 move throughout, across the globe. Yes.

1:42:47 You know, so there's a pregnant. And there's also

1:42:50 some sort of expectation that

1:42:54 it's been set somewhere that there isn't going to be tragedy in life. Like life

1:42:58 isn't going to be easy. And that's that false promise

1:43:02 that people give. Like it's,

1:43:06 it's about your ability to weather

1:43:09 downturns. And still be positive and look

1:43:13 at the how to turn them into something that you can

1:43:17 work with as opposed to allowing it to bring you down. Yeah,

1:43:21 there's always going to be tragedy, but

1:43:24 there's also going to be love. And there's also going to be, you know,

1:43:28 happiness and goodness, too. It's your choice if

1:43:32 you're going to allow the tragedy to weigh too

1:43:35 down or to just find a way to move through

1:43:39 it. Right, exactly. And that's where

1:43:43 Cassette really becomes an interesting character. Right. As we.

1:43:47 As we turn on this. So we're not going to cover the whole.

1:43:50 The whole book today. We're not going to get anywhere close. So I want to.

1:43:55 I want to pause there on that thought because I was going to do another

1:43:59 section, but I think I want to summarize here and wrap

1:44:02 up. Livy's been

1:44:06 very gracious to us with her time, and she's, like I said before at the

1:44:09 beginning, she's a little jet lag. So I want to give her the opportunity to

1:44:12 go catch some Z's. And I think we've covered a lot of

1:44:15 waterfront here with what Hugo is doing and what the book is

1:44:19 doing. Strongly recommend you go out. You pick up. You pick up Les

1:44:23 Miserable. The Signet Classics unabridged version, which

1:44:26 is the version I have, is

1:44:30 1459 pages long. That's

1:44:33 1459 pages. So it will take you a year probably,

1:44:37 if, depending upon how fast a reader you are to go through it, but it

1:44:40 will not be a waste of your time. It will be amazing. And

1:44:44 by the way, then you'll go and see the musical and you'll go

1:44:48 watch the movie, and these things will be a lot more resonant for you as

1:44:51 it was for me. So I'm going to wrap this up by saying this.

1:44:55 I was at a kid's recital. Well, not kids recital. I was at a recital.

1:44:58 So my children go to music school, Right. Because we homeschool our kids and we

1:45:01 want to give them music. We send

1:45:05 them to a local music school and we have one in our town. It's great.

1:45:08 I'm glad we have it. And I'm more than happy to give them my $300

1:45:11 a month for my two kids to go learn music. And every

1:45:15 so often they'll have recitals. So they have one in the spring, they have one

1:45:18 in the summer, and they have one in the fall. Okay. And most recitals

1:45:21 are okay. They're fine. It's like going to think of, think of every kid's

1:45:25 recital you've ever been to at a public school. It's kind of like that.

1:45:30 If you have nieces or nephews or cousins or you've ever been invited to one,

1:45:33 you'll know what I'm talking about. And there are people

1:45:36 at all kinds of different talent levels at this school doing all kinds of different

1:45:40 instruments, playing all kinds of different instruments. And, and they, they teach everybody. They teach.

1:45:44 They even have like a baby toddler class, right? Like a little

1:45:47 Beethoven class all the way up to

1:45:51 70, 80, 90 year old people going and taking guitar lessons and

1:45:54 learning how to play Smoke on the water and stuff because they always wanted to

1:45:57 do it. Okay, so at this recital, there

1:46:01 were about, oh, 25 people that were

1:46:04 performing at the recital and again, kind of all over the map, right?

1:46:08 And the last lady, the second to the last lady who performed, this woman

1:46:12 was probably in her 60s and she

1:46:16 came up and she did a. Her instrument is her voice. So she came

1:46:19 up and she's saying she sang the song from

1:46:23 Les Mis, I have dreamed a dream.

1:46:28 And I was not

1:46:32 expecting this at all. This was totally like,

1:46:36 oh, this is out of the blue. And so

1:46:40 I was listening to her song and I want to, I want to. I sent

1:46:42 myself an email because I made a note about this because it opened up a

1:46:46 door in my head as she was singing and having read the book and having,

1:46:50 you know, knowing I was going to come on the podcast with Libby today and

1:46:52 knowing we're going to be talking about this, it kind of opened up a door

1:46:55 in my head and, and the, the

1:46:58 epiphany that I had was this. I'm going to just, just read it directly.

1:47:04 Unlike contemporary social reformers, I want to close with this idea.

1:47:08 Hugo saw the ability to be heroic

1:47:12 despite your circumstances, whether that was poverty or gender or

1:47:15 ethnicity. Wallace and Ben Hur observed the

1:47:19 same thing in people. This is the spot where Ben Hur

1:47:23 and Les Mis cross over. And it is a real

1:47:26 shame. I think, that the theophany that overwhelms that point in

1:47:30 Ben Hur and the social reform message that overwhelms the point in

1:47:34 Les Miserables have blinded people to those

1:47:37 larger. That larger idea, the idea that you can be

1:47:41 heroic despite your circumstances. The

1:47:45 theater and film adaptations of Les Miserables, I think, miss this

1:47:49 point as well. But we as leaders cannot miss this point.

1:47:53 Coming out of the chaos of the fourth, turning into the next social, cultural,

1:47:57 an economic high in the west, we are looking

1:48:00 for heroes. We are entering an

1:48:04 age of heroes, I think. But we must defeat the forces

1:48:08 of vulgarity and Commonness and

1:48:11 banality. We have to overcome our circumstances.

1:48:16 And those forces do have a head start. They really do,

1:48:19 and they insist on themselves. I mean, we saw this in the mayoral election in

1:48:23 la. We see this in our public life

1:48:27 all the time. But we must be heroic. And I think this

1:48:31 is the larger message from Les Mis and the larger message from the books we

1:48:34 covered this month on the show. We must be heroic in spite of our

1:48:38 circumstances. Not because of them and not in opposition

1:48:41 to them, but in spite of them. And this

1:48:45 is the thing that unlocked in my head when I saw that woman heroically

1:48:49 belt out. I have dreamed a dream. And it.

1:48:52 It absolutely blew me away. I mean, my wife was gonna cry when

1:48:56 she was sitting there. The woman hit. The woman hit. And then. And then.

1:49:01 Here's the end of that story. Here's the close of that. She walked off the

1:49:04 stage, got the. Gave him all little medals for performing. She got her little medal.

1:49:07 She walked off the stage. She walked out. I didn't even see that woman in

1:49:09 the parking lot. I didn't see that woman in. In the. In the lobby afterward.

1:49:13 That woman dropped the mic and beat the street. She

1:49:16 was out. Stunning performance.

1:49:21 Absolutely amazing and heroic. Was she

1:49:24 real? If she wasn't real, I

1:49:28 would have had to make her up.

1:49:32 Great. Final thoughts, Libby, as we close. Oh, yeah. I think

1:49:36 you. I can't be anything that you've just said. It's just

1:49:39 beautiful, right? Just.

1:49:43 It's. It's. Yeah, it was heroism.

1:49:47 This is what we need. We need more heroism. And everybody has the

1:49:50 opportunity to be a hero. Everybody does.

1:49:54 Just everyone has the opportunity to continue to evolve and

1:49:58 to grow into better versions of themselves. And as you do that,

1:50:01 you're modeling, you know, virtuousness

1:50:05 to the rest of the world. So it's in our small moments every

1:50:09 single day that we give hope to others, whether it's acknowledged

1:50:13 or not. That's right. Yeah. That's the story.

1:50:16 That's the story. Well, we will. We will have Libby back. We will. We

1:50:20 will. I want to talk about cassette. I want to talk about what happens with

1:50:23 the barricades in the back end of Les Mis. We will

1:50:27 revisit this. This is going to be one of those

1:50:28 books,

1:50:35 Monte Cristo, not probably a little bit later on this

1:50:39 year. So once again, I would like to thank Libby Unger for coming on our

1:50:43 show today. Thank you. With that. Well, thank you. You're welcome. That. Well,

1:50:47 we're out

1:50:51 and.