You're absolutely right. And I didn't follow up at the time because I was so thankful to get him as a guest on my cast in the first place.
For what it's worth -- I followed up yesterday with Bill by email and he said the following:
"Our political problems are more serious than most people are willing to admit. You look back at history, at nations that are careening into civil war--that is, at the US in 1850, at Kosovo in 1996, at England in 1642, at Rome in 60 BC or 90 BC--and you ALWAYS find that people don't take seriously the POSSIBILITY that they could be creating the conditions of a civil war, until something happens that they didn't expect, and . ..BOOM. . .all of a sudden it is too late to stop it. So what I am trying to say to the country, as best I am able to from my relatively small podium, is "take seriously the damage that you MAY be doing." You don't see a civil war coming. . .well, nobody ever sees a Civil War coming; that's why they happen. Nobody sees it until it is too late."
And then his second comment was, "The essential fact about civil wars is that they happen less than once in a lifetime, and, because they happen less than once in a lifetime, the events leading into the civil war are not a part of anyone's experience. Our perception of the arc of history is like our perception of the world: it APPEARS to be flat, because it is bending so slowly that we can't see the curve. We are bending very slowly toward dysfunction leading to chaos, AS EVERY OTHER COUNTRY PERIODICALLY DOES, but because the curve is so gradual, we think that the world is flat, that the conflicts of today are merely repetitions of the conflicts of years past."
For what it's worth -- I followed up yesterday with Bill by email and he said the following:
"Our political problems are more serious than most people are willing to admit. You look back at history, at nations that are careening into civil war--that is, at the US in 1850, at Kosovo in 1996, at England in 1642, at Rome in 60 BC or 90 BC--and you ALWAYS find that people don't take seriously the POSSIBILITY that they could be creating the conditions of a civil war, until something happens that they didn't expect, and . ..BOOM. . .all of a sudden it is too late to stop it. So what I am trying to say to the country, as best I am able to from my relatively small podium, is "take seriously the damage that you MAY be doing." You don't see a civil war coming. . .well, nobody ever sees a Civil War coming; that's why they happen. Nobody sees it until it is too late."