The question

What thought won't let you sleep?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A long-running fixed question in The Guardian's weekly Q&A questionnaire.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Bill Clinton

42nd President of the United States, 1993–2001

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Now that’s what happens when people go crazy, where the only thing that matters is whose camp are you in, whose side are you on, what tribe do you belong to — where facts and discussions become irrelevant. And it made me wonder whether the way I was raised and all the listening and storytelling skills I learned as a boy would even be relevant today. They’d be good if you’re in. They’re still really important to getting anything done, but if you live in an environment where everything is a litmus test and everything is a-hundred-to-nothing, and the only thing that matters is feeding your resentment, and anger blinds you to answers, and being very sanctimonious somehow proves your sincerity and authenticity, it’s really hard to get anything done. It’s a whole new challenge now, and that’s why — and the Russians knew that. You know, that’s when they get in here and start fooling with all these politics. They realize you just sort of load it up because once people take sides based on what tribe they’re in then there’s no difference in facts and fiction. There’s no difference in truth and lies. It’s just, does this confirm what side you’re on? And you can’t run a democracy that way. It is utterly impossible to preserve democracy.

Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

Others on this question

View all 196 →
Laurence Fox English actor and activist
Worry about being self-employed. Nowadays, I don’t lose sleep over my divorce – I did for about a year.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 December 2019 source ↗
Julian Lennon English musician, photographer, and philanthropist
A bee in my bonnet – whether that’s a song in my head or a person I’m thinking about.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 September 2022 source ↗

More from Bill Clinton

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Question Which problem are you still chipping away at? Craft & work
We have all these interesting challenges now. No one knows whether automation and robotics, nanotechnology, will kill more jobs than it creates. If it does, that presents a serious problem. What are we going to do? Have a few of us work to support everybody else, or shorten the workweek for everybody? If so, how do we get from here to there? No one knows yet how we’re going to stop cyber terrorism from wrecking honest discourse in democracy and maybe putting our very lives at risk.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Question What do you need to believe in order to get through an ordinary day? Values & belief
Yeah, there were a lot of brave people who stood up. Then, you know, it cost Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and Viola Liuzza and a lot of the others their lives, but they were on the right side of history, and they believed if they made this sacrifice that it would work out. And whenever I get discouraged about everything they stood against rising up again, I realize there just are no public, or permanent, victories. You have to keep fighting for freedom.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Question What counsel has proved most valuable to you? Time & hindsight
He knew that it would be unpopular in Arkansas. You know, we’re just a state dominated by the Scotch-Irish, who provided 25 percent of all the soldiers who ever fought in uniform for America since the revolution. One of our counties had the highest fatality rate of any county in America in World War II. A lot of poor African American kids were in the military, and their parents didn’t want to know it was for nothing. I mean it was like an across-the-board challenge, and he believed — he had a very clear view of it, and I thought it was unusual because Fulbright had been more willing than I wish he had been to trim his sails on civil rights for a long time. And he said, “Yes, I disagree with them on that too,” but he said, “If you want to be a representative, and they know something, as much about something as you do — and they do on this — sometimes you have to give in.” “But on this, if I know more than they do, I am doing an immoral thing to preserve my political position at the expense of doing what’s right for their children over the long run.” And in the end, it played a significant role in the undoing of his career, but he did an enormous service to the country in the meantime. And I think — he lived to be 87 — he lived long enough for me to become president and give him the Medal of Freedom, and I think he died at peace with himself and the decision he made.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Question What are you best at that nobody watching would notice? Craft & work
Well, it wasn’t a game to me. We were taught, interestingly enough, given the current state of political affairs, that you should try not to hate anyone, that hatred was a sickness and a weakness, and that there were very few people who were completely evil, so you should go out of your way to figure out what makes them tick and see if you can find some way to communicate with them. I learned that more with my family — even before I was old enough to know what I was doing —when I was eating meals, my grandmother’s brother and his family had — they had four kids, and they always fed a lot of people, and we ate there a lot, and they would talk about whatever had happened that week. And the kids could talk, but they had to prove they could listen first, so before I could tell a story I had to recount what I had just heard, because if you weren’t listening, nobody wanted to listen to you. And it was like a primer in human nature, and I was fortunate in having people all along the way who tried to help explain other people to me, and I developed an obsessive interest in doing it.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗
Question What does everyone in your world seem to agree on that you think is wrong? Values & belief
If I had to make the welfare decision again tomorrow, I’d sign it again tomorrow. We had a 60 percent reduction in the welfare rolls. We had an enormous percentage of poor people move into the workforce, start middle-class lifestyles, and when we had a brief tech recession of six months in 2001, after I left office, people who had moved from welfare to work were less likely to be laid off than the general working population. So I would do it again.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗

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