[Applause] welcome back everybody ladies and my next guest is an author columnist and Peabody award-winning host of CNN's fared Zakaria GPS his latest book is called age or revolutions please welcome to the Late Show fared [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Zakaria as I said the new book is the age of revolutions right there we'll get to that more in just a moment but first you know on on your show fared Zakaria uh GPS uh on CNN you recently covered Biden's uh low approval ratings which is ju
st below 40% right now 393 something like that despite the economy doing pretty well right now especially compared to other countries looking at the rest of the globe how does our economy stack against the major industrialized nations right now do we are doing much better than any of the other major economies in the world to give you a simple number in 2008 the Euro zone Europe basically and the US economies were the same size today the US economy is twice the size of the Eurozone economy if Bri
tain were to join the United States as the 51st state it would be the poorest state in the Union below Mississippi so we we're doing a amazingly but what has happened is you know even so people for a while said well we don't realize it we're feeling the inflation well for the last 18 months consumer sentiment has been going up but Biden's approval ratings still Flatline and what's really happened is our political identities are no longer shaped by economics as it used to be for so many years the
y're shaped by Culture by class by religion by all these tribal identities and that was part of the reason I wrote the book because I realized this began with Obama this this there used to be the tightest Connection in predictive polling which was you know your view of the economy president's approval rating always roughly the same now I mean under Obama the stock market tripled under Obama his approval ratings didn't move much um in in the book here age of revolutions you uh spans four centurie
s uh of Revolutions in the Netherlands France Britain and the us there have well there been a lot of revolutions how did you choose these four so what I was trying to understand is you know I was looking at the president saying why are we having this cultural backlash and then I thought you know I realized how much change we had gone through so I looked back in the past and asked myself what were the other big moments where you had this kind of revolutionary change you know the Industrial Revolu
tion which I call the mother of all revolutions because it really created the modern world the Dutch are an interesting case because it's really the first modern country it's the the country that invented modern economics modern politics uh it's this tiny little country doesn't seem modern because when we think of the Dutch we think of windmills and wooden shoes which is not the highest level of Technology but for its time it was pretty cutting and you know became the richest country in Europe a
nd therefore in the world in the 1580s and has for 500 years basically been among the top 10 you know richest per capita in the in the world I it's it's it's an amazing place I'm very very high on the Dutch we and by the way we're living in a we're living in a city that used to be called New Amsterdam exactly well a lot of people are high on the Dutch these days beat me to the joke they beat me to the joke um you you say the subtitle for this book is age of revolutions progress and backlash from
1600 to the present what would you say the main modern backlash we're experiencing right now is I think it's it's really all around this this identity stuff I me there's a backlash against globalization there's a backlash against the open information revolution you know a lot of people are saying it's too much it's the social media is is kind of ruining our lives but I'd say the principle one has been this one uh of we've really moved think about it you know we've always through human history h
ad some group has been up or down but women for tens of thousands of years were second class citizens and that has changed dramatically in the last 30 years so think about it right 10 15 20,000 years of history and then in the last 30 years we upended the basic structure of the family well look at the right-wing reactionary movements all over the world whether it's Islamic fundamentalism whether it's Christian nationalism whether it's you know the ultra Orthodox in in uh in Israel they all the p
rincipal concern is often women have gotten too up you know let's move xiin Bing gave a speech the other the other day in which he said women basically need to go back to the to the kitchen and they need to start having babies again so well they really need to start having babies in China because they're having a demographic collapse over there right and that that let but I don't think the ancest have the head of the Communist Party say to women go back into the kitchen no I'm not I'm not agreei
ng with the chairman as much as I enjoy our Chinese customers I you now or have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist party I'm Singaporean sir the UN Security Council on Monday passed a resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza thanks to a US abstention the key thing is here the key thing is it's thanks to a us exstension um what does this exstension by the United States which we haven't done before what does that signal to Israel what does it signal to the people of Gaza and what does
the world see from this I think it's a big deal it is one of the first times that the United States has you know publicly taken a a position that is different from that of Israel it has not backed Israel it you know it's happened before Reagan uh got very uh uh upset with the Israelis when the invasion of Lebanon happened and and he publicly broke with them but it's rare and I think what it tells you is that the Biden Administration is deeply frustrated with BB Netanyahu they have been supporti
ve of the Israeli government but counseling to be more cautious more humanitarian Aid more proportionate Warfare I think you know the most important thing is this is in Israel's best interests because what's happened is you know in a in an overreaction to the terror attacks Israel is going overboard frankly just like we did after 911 and Biden one of the best things Biden said to the to Israel was learn from our mistakes you know Donald Rumsfeld once said I wish he had actually followed his advi
ce but he said you've got to ask yourself with your with your with your actions are you creating more terrorists than you were killing by this action and that's what I would ask the isra government are you creating more terrorists than you're killing well his new book age of revolutions is available now for readed zakari everybody we'll be right [Music] back
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