Just before we get into this article, I don't think there's been an article that better articulates my feelings about where we are right now than this one. So I highly recommend it. Wow. Did you guys feel that way about this one? Sky says-

Yeah, I felt it articulated your feelings. Thank you. Better than any article I've read. Same. I just thought he captured what is going on. Sky says, this article is bonkers. It's not bonkers. It's the opposite of bonkers. It's the conch bonk. So it's not a compliment? I don't know what it is. What's bonkers backwards? R-reck

R-reck

R-reck No thanks. All my life, he starts out talking about his journey as a conservative. All my life, I've had a certain idea about America. I've thought of America as a deeply nation that is nonetheless a force for tremendous good in the world. From Abraham Lincoln to FDR to Ronald Reagan and beyond, Americans fought for freedom and human dignity and against tyranny. We promoted democracy, funded the Marshall Plan, saved millions of people across Africa from HIV and AIDS. When we cause harm, like in Vietnam or Iraq, it was because of our overconfidence and naivete, not because of evil intentions. And

I think that's a pretty common self-conception. We are a force for good. And I think that honestly, that's part of what's behind MAGA, Make America Great Again. It was this sense that in the past, I felt like America was this wonderful shining city on a hill, Caitlin's thing, this magnanimous country that did good in the world. And people got annoyed with progressives and liberals constantly trashing America and making like the 1519 project, whatever that was. People didn't like the negativity around America. And part of the MAGA thing was, let's talk about our country again.

Okay. Yeah. But it's a very different form of positive talk. Since January 20th, that was the inauguration, if you don't remember. As I've watched America behave vilely towards our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Vladimir Zelensky in the Oval Office. I've had trouble describing the anguish I've experienced. Maybe the best description for what I'm feeling is moral shame. To watch the loss of your nation's honor is embarrassing and painful. And then he compares Michael Gerson to Russell and it's- Russell Vogt. I think it's Vogt now. I've heard more people say Vogt in the last week than say, maybe, I don't know. Is it Vogt or Vogt? I don't know. I'm going to say Vogt because I heard, I think Ezra Klein was saying Vogt and he seems like he's smart or at least has fact checkers at the New York Times. I'm going to look this up. I'm sure there's a definitive answer. Somewhere. So Russell Vaught, Michael Gerson and Russell Vaught are both Wheaton College graduates. So Michael Gerson helped George W. Bush launch PEPFAR, which is estimated to have saved about 25 million lives, people with HIV around the world and HIV prevention. Russell Vaught, Donald Trump's budget director, another Wheaton College grad, has said things like this about federal workers. And this is not like about one specific federal worker. This is about all federal workers. There's

a handful. Every one

of the millions of people who have opted to be in public service. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma. Just like Jesus said. Yeah. Since coming back from the White House, Trump has caused suffering among Ukrainians, suffering among immigrants who've lived here for decades. He said, David Brooks. Oh, yeah, that is his name. Yeah, I was thinking the Brooks. I always get between David French, the Brooks that makes the Simpsons. What's his name? I don't know. Okay. And David Brooks. He says, many of my friends in Washington are evangelical Christians who found their vocation in public service, fighting sex trafficking, serving the world's poor, protecting America from foreign threats, doing biomedical research to cure disease. They are trying to live lives consistent with the gospel of mercy and love. Trump has devastated their work. He isn't just declaring war on, quote unquote, wokeness. He's declaring war on Christian service or any kind of service, really. If there's an underlying philosophy driving Trump, it is this, morality is for suckers. And if there's a consistent strategy, it is this, day after day, the administration works to create a world where ruthless people can thrive. That means destroying any institution or arrangement that might check the strong man's power. The rule of law, domestic and international, restrains power, so it must be eviscerated. Inspectors general, judge advocate general officers, oversight mechanisms, and watchdog agencies are a potential restraint on power, so they must be fired or neutered. The truth itself is a restraint on power, so it must be abandoned. Lying becomes the language of the state. And then he goes back through conservative history and his history with the group of conservatives that were reading books by economists like Milton Friedman, reading books by Edmund Burke. But then there were also a group of reactionaries that just wanted to shock the left. And they were attracted to TV and radio, whereas the other group was attracted to writing in intellectual magazines. And the ones that were attracted to TV and radio and the ones who primarily just wanted to shock the left have won. And he's come to appreciate that they were never conservative. They were anti-establishment, but they were not pro-conservative. And that, you know, if you go back in history, you really see that start with Rush Limbaugh, who was the first one. in radio deregulation that allowed you to do partisan radio broadcasting. Before that, it was illegal. You'd lose your FCC license if you did politically partisan radio broadcasting. And Limbaugh was one of the first ones to jump in and say, let's try this. Okay.

Hold on. Yeah. And I'd love to get Caitlin's take on this too. I understand that there's a TV, radio kind of dynamic, a media dynamic to this without putting, I don't want to say Rush Limbaugh isn't to blame for anything, but I think part of the blame should be laid at the feet of the audience. as well, ultimately they rise or fall on their viewership. They're trying to attract as large an audience as possible. Hold on. And when you're trying to attract a super large audience, we know that more people are drawn by fear and anger than they are by thoughtfulness and nuance. So you're just going to be mad at human nature? No, I'm saying when your political discourse is market driven and the market loves anger and fear, that's what you're going to get more and more and more of. There's a reason why when you go and watch a news program on PBS, it has a very different tone than when you watch it on one of the other cable networks. Or BBC. Or BBC, exactly. Because they're not market driven and therefore they're not feeding

the base motivations of people. Capitalism is the problem.

It is in this regard. Yes. When it's unchecked and it's decoupled from virtue, this is what you get. Am I wrong, Caitlin?

No. I mean, I think you're making a point people have made for a long time about, the medium is the message. The way in which we receive political information shapes the kind of information we want and the kind of information that gets people's attention. The other thing, though, that I think is really important about this piece is two things. One, he clarifies that what actually is happening at the level of media and political power is two groups of elites on the progressive end and the conservative end fighting, both claiming to care for vulnerable people and both often discarding them when it doesn't fit their ideological preferences. And I appreciate his willingness to say a lot of this ideological fight, like a lot of the, I'm not actually conservative, I'm just anti-left, exists on the other side and is mostly like the chattering class. It's not the people who are,, it is the people who are consuming the media. Like you're talking about Sky. We forget that like a huge percentage of people voting for presidential candidates are not people paying attention to any of that media. They might pay attention to some of the, like the news. They might like watch some Fox news, or they might watch some CNN, but like, they're not paying attention to all the op-eds, all the Twitter, all the radio. A lot of them are making political judgments without all of that information. And then we are making our judgments about them and their political decisions based on information they don't even have or they're not paying attention to.

Do you know how popular Rush Limbaugh's radio show was, Caitlin Chess?

Oh, it's a lot of people for sure. Tens of millions. Tens of millions. There's also a lot of people that are not paying attention to any of that. Yeah, but they're on Facebook. Or who are captive to some of those things, but don't know what else is out there. But the other thing that I think is really important, the end of his article is like surprisingly hopeful in that he's like, people are mobilizing, people are having conversations. But I think the thing that's really important is across the piece, he's talking about nihilism and how nihilism and power together create these really toxic dynamics. And what I'm worried about is people will read most of the article and actually become sort of nihilistic the way he's claiming Trumpism is because so much of the article is like, look at how awful all of this is. miss that you can replicate the same exact dynamics from a different political perspective. If all you're focusing on is everything horrible and you're not, he's not just hopeful in the end, like, oh, well, maybe we'll get some things together and try and have a good conversation. He also is saying like, at some point, Trump will make mistakes. At some point there will be failures. And if we, he doesn't say this explicitly, this is me now, but like, if we have not cultivated the posture, the spiritual formation, the fortitude against all of the temptations toward nihilism to create something good in the aftermath, we'll just create something bad. Like there's such great potential here for us to be so hardened and twisted by all of this that he still wins in the end, even if he doesn't win politically. Okay. Okay. Less

than halfway through the article, because it does sound from what we've said so far, like it's a downer of an article. It is not. That's why I like this article so much. Less than halfway through the article, he says, how does this end? And then he completely changes to talk about other events in American history that have been similar, particularly the presidency of Andrew Jackson and how he was probably the most Trumpian nihilistic president that we had before Trump. And that the response to him was the creation of the Whigs Party, which was responsible for a great reformation of American systems and building of new institutions to help the common man and to hold up human dignity so that the response to Jackson was more lasting than Jackson. And then he goes on to say, and I think this is my favorite part. Oh, here we go. He says, we've reached a point of traumatic rupture. A demagogue has come to power and is ripping everything down. But what's likely to happen is that the demagogue will start making mistakes because incompetence is built into the nihilistic project. Nihilists can only destroy, not build. Authoritarian nihilism is inherently stupid. I don't mean that Trumpists have low IQs. I mean they do things that run directly against their own interests. They are pathologically self-destructive. When you create an administration in which one man has all the power and everybody else has to flatter his voracious ego, stupidity results. Authoritarians are also morally stupid. Humility, prudence, and honesty are not just nice virtues to have. They're practical tools that produce good outcomes. When you replace them with greed, lust, hypocrisy, and dishonesty, terrible things happen. So his conclusion is terrible things are going to happen, which will not be pleasant for anyone. People will get hurt, but it will also probably mark the beginning of the end of this particularly populist and nihilistic moment.

I really hope so, but I'm not convinced. I'm

not convinced.

I mean, I think it would be fantastic to see a new kind of Whig movement that is virtuous and moral and constitutional and seeks the common good. And for those who don't know their history, the Whig party kind of morphed eventually into the Republican party under Abraham Lincoln. And so that's that era. But I think there are some, I appreciate him making parallels to 19th century America, to Jacksonian America, to the Whig party, but there are certain conditions which are fundamentally different in the 21st century that are unprecedented that we can't know

if they will go the same direction. Sky, are you going to make the positive story less hopeful? No,

I hope he's right. I just think there's a fundamental missing piece here, which, and I think he maybe talks about this a little bit. Caitlin, you're ready to go. You

talk about the fundamental missing piece you think's there, and then I'll talk

about the one I think's there. Okay. I think one of the fundamental missing pieces here is digital media.

I knew you were going to say that. Yes. Well, what? Is

that bad? You're right. You're right. No, you're totally right. There were, obviously it was newspapers primarily in the 19th century. It was before radio. It was before any of that. And there was a fragmentation of American media, but there were fewer fragmentations. And with algorithms and digital media, it's just exponentially worse and it makes it that much harder to try to unify a country after a rupture like what we might be going through. So I hope the pattern holds that he's describing. I think there are variables that we don't know what effect they may have and can the rupture be mended the way it was almost 200 years ago or not. So Caitlin, what was the piece you think

is

missing here?