Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

Episode Summary There’s so much news going on nowadays that it’s impossible to keep up with everything—in Minnesota, DC, and elsewhere. But authoritarianism is on the march in many places, including possibly in your city or state, where extremists haven’t just continued their interest in censoring schools and public libraries, they have expanded them to include universities, museums, and scientific research.This is extremely un-American stuff, and yet sadly, it is being marketed in just the opposite way. Censorship advocates are weaponizing patriotism, concern for children, and political fairness to crack down on the free speech of people they don’t like.Back on the show to discuss how and why this is happening, and to provide some arguments for free expression that activists can utilize is Jonathan Friedman, he’s the Managing Director of the Free Expression program at PEN America, a wonderful organization that promotes free speech and literacy which just released a new report about government censorship of college professors and students.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--America’s libraries and schools are facing an epidemic of censorship (Friedman’s previous TOC appearance)--Censorship was always a core demand of early reactionary activists like William F. Buckley--The ‘Intellectual Dark Web’ and the false equivalence of criticism and censorship--How misinformation against ‘cancel culture’ was used to build an opposing politics of censorshipAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:22 — Censorship laws are deliberately vague to maximize fear and compliance13:22 — Living in fear of non-compliance17:48 — Supposed advocates for ‘Western values’ are now censoring classic authors23:42 — Does censorship actually work though?27:11 — Fake free speech absolutism33:44 — Responding to the ‘parents rights’ canard40:32 — America’s declining global reputation under Trump43:38 — Responding to false ‘patriotism’ arguments48:51 — The value of literacy and readingAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So lot has happened since you were on the program in 2022. And not a lot of good things in terms of free speech and free expression. Let’s, and I, think, and there’s been challenges both last time it was challenges at the state level primarily.But now we have federal issues as well. What are some of the biggest things ongoing right now that maybe that have been passed in the past several years in your view? And then we’ll go from there.JONATHAN FRIEDMAN: Sure. Well, I think starting in 2021 we saw, something new. Which were what we called at the time, educational gag orders. There were these proposals being passed into law in a few states that sub to constrain how it is that teachers could talk about certain issues.And a lot of the language that was originally in these laws a few years ago was very vague, but. was also vague in its implications. So they would say, here’s a list of concepts that teachers can’t talk about. And, in a lot of states it was unclear to what extent it would apply, for example, to professors at colleges and universities as compared to K to 12 teachers, which is more clear.And from that, moment in time, what we’ve seen is, a lot of activity. Kinda build on that idea. The idea being that the government should extend new control in one way or another over public education. Some of that has taken new shape in higher education proposals to [00:04:00] not just exert control over what academics might teach college age students, but for example, to kind of undermine the entire operation of colleges and universities, for example, weakening the power of faculty to set curriculum or setting new rules like we’ve seen in Texas about certain topics that can’t be taught in an college level class at all.And then in K to 12, what we’ve seen is an ongoing effort to apply these restrictions, not just to classrooms, but to school libraries and to also come up with new mechanisms that essentially may not be forms of direct. Prohibitions telling people what they can’t teach, but they function as such.For example, empowering parents to have rights over what their own students might be able to access in a school, but thereby. And this is key, thereby censoring that material for everyone. And this is a very, I mean, it’s, it reflects a really challenging aspect of public education in this country that, that doesn’t necessarily have easy answers.what is the role of public education vis-a-vis parents and students. But I think when you step back and you see, The whole picture, the effort to control higher education, the effort to, restrict K to 12 education.It’s inevitable to come to the conclusion that at a very baseline, we are at an unprecedented moment for what we might think of as. The freedom to learn in public schooling, public universities, the freedom to ask questions, the freedom to talk about current events, the freedom to recommend books, the freedom to relate to students about things that are current topics in their lives. All of this is being narrowed. All of it is being undermined.All of it is being chilled so that now, if a teacher is thinking [00:06:00] about going to see a, theater play, a performance, they’re gonna be much more nervous about. any possible content that might upset anybody, and what that means is it’s all driving toward this kind of lowest common denominator, meaning, the thing that everybody can agree on, and if nobody can agree on much, then suddenly you can’t teach anything anymore.And so if to start to recognize that as uncomfortable as freedom can be, at times, it is a better alternative than sort of continuing to narrow and restrict. What it is that we can talk and think about all the time.SHEFFIELD: Absolutely. And we’re also seeing a lot of restrictions and censorship on museums and government employees, particularly scientists as well, like a list of, words that are going to get you flagged if you have them in your grant proposal for scientific research. And extensive.Censorship of museum exhibits, including one just recently where they ordered the removal of information about the fact that it was George Washington, I think, wasn’t it, that hehadFRIEDMAN: in Philadelphia? Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting, like there are these efforts over many years too. Improve, improve the story of. History in this country and prove the narrative of what people think they, what people, can grasp about the past to make that information more accessible. And what we are seeing is an effort to roll that back, to say that, that those narratives ought to be essentially erased even if they are true. if, they don’t make us feel good, let’s say whoever that us is, us being people in power, and that’s a very, that’s a very particular idea and approach to history and to the nation and its role in history, right?To say that the purpose is the purpose, truth is the purpose is deeper understanding. Is the purpose to [00:08:00] ask questions or is the purpose. Well indoctrination or to have to propagandize to narrow what it is that people have access to. So yeah, we’re seeing this go way beyond schools and universities where I think it began, and it’s been happening also in all kinds of institutions, cultural, artistic institutions for years, museums will tell you they’ve been more and more nervous actually about. School visits because of, what parents might complain about in a museum. And if you think about like, art in a museum and you have a parent who wants to ban books that have anything to do with nudity, well they’re probably gonna find something to complain about in a museum.So this kind of sense of, that every cultural or artistic institution should operate on eggshells, that every educator should operate with that mindset, it’s really gonna be damaging long term.SHEFFIELD: It really is. And I mean, effectively this. Is kind of the, they’re, trying to institutionalize the heckler’s veto. Can you talk us about that for people who haven’t heard that term, tell, us what that is.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, that’s a, it’s a really useful way of thinking about this. The heckler’s veto is the idea that. If you have maybe someone who’s giving a speech to an audience and one person in the audience heckles, they will interrupt, take down the event, heckle it to such an extent that they veto the experience of everybody else who came and who wanted to participate in.And we’re seeing that kind of veto exercised in a lot of different ways. On the one hand, we’ve seen that. On campuses for many years with speakers, across the political spectrum. This idea that someone’s speech or what they’ve said in the past or what they might say now is so offensive that, we should make the decision for everybody that no one should be able to hear it.We should stop and shut down the event from happening. And, turns out nobody across the political spectrum, has an exclusive right to that tactic. ‘cause we’re seeing it all over the place. But the [00:10:00] other thing is that we are seeing government, adopt that kind of heckler’s, veto, government enabling it, government encouraging it in a lot of places.And so, that’s what I was referring to before with the school library. and what we’ve seen with book bans all over the country is that sometimes you just have one individual who may have challenged. A thousand books or a hundred books or whatever it is. And especially when school districts adopt rules that they will remove books from circulation when and if they are challenged, what it means is it’s very easy to get a whole lot of books removed just by challenging them. And the more you dig into that phenomenon, you discover that the challenge forms are sometimes half filled out. They’re filled out with falsehoods, they’re filled out with things that don’t make sense. I, one of my favorite examples was a. A book which contained the poem by Amanda Gorman, which she read at President Biden’s inauguration.And like, I don’t know at what age someone should be able necessarily to read that poem, but the point is it was in a school library, but the person who challenged it said the book was by Oprah Winfrey. I mean, it just like, not, you’re not even really accurately filling out this form in a very sensible, straightforward manner.So. The more the more the phenomenon has been excavated, the more clear it’s been that it has been replicated across state lines and that often you see those kinds of mistakes repeated.Censorship laws are deliberately vague to maximize fear and complianceSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And another key, component to this, which these people who are challenging books are, some of the many people who were doing this. Is that these laws, in many cases are deliberately vague in a way that is designed to chill speech that is that they get more of an effect than, they could legally get.Because they know that if they’re too detailed, then it would get struck down as an explicit violation of the First Amendment. But if they make it vague, then it will stand a [00:12:00] chance.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, in some ways there’s been this embrace of the vagueness, and we see that time and again that state legislators for example, when given the opportunities to make laws more clear prefer not to. So, one that I’m reading today in Florida is a new bill that would ban the phrase the West Bank from all official government materials.I think that’s the phrasing and. You have to replace that with other, words to refer to the land in the Middle East that is so contested and, it’s, really astonishing because not only is the rationale for this change, sort of unclear, but what are official government materials also becomes. really vague. So would that include like something being created for a classroom, a college classroom, a school library, et cetera? It’s not clear. But also there’s a desire not to clarify it when it could be clear so that it will have the necessary chilling and censoring effect.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. and teachers are seeing this over and over as you were saying, like. They’re like, well, I don’t know if I can say this. And that’s the idea, is to get everyone to live in fear of non-compliance. Ultimately. I think that’s what we’re talking about here.Living in fear of non-complianceFRIEDMAN: Yeah, I mean, and this, is like, it’s exactly the same phenomenon that’s now afflicting universities and college teaching that I saw years ago with school libraries. I remember, a vague rule in Missouri, it was a few years ago, that led some school librarians to sweep through their districts and pull any book off the shelf. That might that might run afoul of one of those rules. And I’m actually remembering I have some of these books behind me still from the, I’m just gonna grab ‘em for a sec here. Just coincidentally, I know these are on that shelf. Like they, they pulled, this is a this is a graphic adaptation of the [00:14:00] Gettysburg Address, and you can flip through this book.I have you tell me what it was in this book that somebody objected to. I’m not sure. The closest that I’ve seen is that the law. Band nudity and there’s like pictures of, slaves here who are, dressed for African weather rather than whatever it is, the middle passage, et cetera.So, I guess those are people who are not wearing shirts. Okay. If you are told though, that as a librarian you might go to jail and get a criminal record. If you give a certain kind of material to a student and that material might be designated as any kind of nudity and this Gettysburg Address graphic novel, like a book literally written to make this accessible to young people, and you’re saying you might go to jail for it, you’re gonna take that risk. And so Well, apparently not. And so what happens is, people are made to feel like the stakes of this are so high that they ought to air on the side of. Removing materials. And in fact, that phrase err on the side of caution in quotes there, that’s actually a phrase that was popularized in Florida as a way to ban books that school districts should err on the side of caution.And if you, if we all err on the side of caution when we’re talking about intellectual access to books, I mean, do you know how many books are not cautious when you think about like, books that you actually wanna read? They, you have exciting things that happen in them, unexpected things, topics that you may not encounter in your life, and that you can only come to understand through the, through an impactful story that, that, makes that kind of information or experience accessible to you.So inevitably. That leads to limiting, the bounds of what people might learn about in a library. And the other book I had here, I pulled off the shelf was, this is a graphic novel adaptation of The Odyssey. That was another one in MIS in Missouri too. And there was a whole bunch of others as well.[00:16:00] Something like 50 50 or so. Art history books, books like, the works of Picasso. Again. It gets pretty limitless if you are taking that kind of cautious approach. And so now we’re also seeing that in higher education with Texas University professors being told they can’t put things on their syllabus.one of them most, in the news recently was told that he couldn’t teach. Plato works by Plato and you think, oh, how could you be tellinga university? How could you tell a Philosophy professor not to teach Plato? I still, it’s a philosophical question I don’t have the answer to yet, except to say that’s what it’s like to live under these laws.that’s the that’s the fundamental contradictions of ‘em actually to what we think of when we think of public education and what it’s supposed to do for people. Critical thinking, open minds.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. and, that is another kind of weapon, weaponization of the vagueness is, trying to classify everything as pornography and pornographic. And so that’s obviously what the Gettysburg address challenge presumably was. But they also even did it with Anne Frank. And illustrated, Anne Frank diaryFRIEDMAN: Yeah, that that’s another one that’s been attacked. And one of the supposedly controversial parts of that book involves Anne imagining herself among a field of Greek nude statues of sort of Greek goddesses. And, the artists and the illustrator who talk about that, say, they were trying to honor actually. What Anne was interested in and what she was talking about in that passage from her diary, and the idea that would be somehow pornographic or driven by an illicit intention. I mean, that’s offensive, so unfortunately that’s just what we’ve seen all over.Supposed advocates for ‘Western values’ are now censoring classic authorsSHEFFIELD: Yeah, and, there’s a huge. Terrible irony also in that while these censorship advocates are, trying to censor [00:18:00] these major historical figures and, books, they’re also at the same time claiming to be, we’re the defenders of western culture from these, evil. woke pornographers or whatever they’re, fill in the blank insult.But they’re, literally attacking the foundations of the very things that they claim to believe it.FRIEDMAN: I mean, ironically the irony of ironies here, right? and we’ve seen also many universities now start to set up these civic centers on campuses, but they aren’t what they seem, And there are all these norms around. How universities are supposed to work. Like, sometimes we can blur the distinction.We talk about public education at large in K to 12 versus in higher education, but certainly we understand that like college level education is supposed to be about, the unfettered exploration of ideasin its truest sense. They’re adults. And so, what’s, been. But there’s also a tradition surrounding how faculty as experts play a role in setting curriculum in determining syllabi and the like.And what’s happening on a lot of campuses is now this new tactic of. Mandating through public funding, the creation of a civic center for maybe the study of like Western traditional culture or something like that. But then not actually trusting experts in these fields to run these centers. Instead mandating, in some cases through law what students would have to read and how they would have to encounter the topics. And again, like it’s not to say that this is all necessarily. Bad or would not achieve some positive outcomes. But fundamentally, the principle of political control in that direct manner of, excuse me, of college education, the, it’s fundamentally college education was meant to be insulated from that kind of direct political control.And that’s something that university [00:20:00] leaders certainly in the United States have embraced as part of what has made the American academic system. So strong in the envy of the world is the academic freedom that has led to discoveries, to provocative teaching, to taking up difficult issues. Now, I’m not saying this already wasn’t challenged by other cultural forces.For a decade it was, but now what we’re seeing is something different. We’re seeing the weaponization of that through direct government censorship, which, unfortunately is just gonna make it even harder to ever right the ship when it comes to these issues.SHEFFIELD: It does, and, they really are not considering how they would feel if they’re if they’re, the, opposing political party was in charge of these civic centers, because guess what, then according to their, definition of what’s true and what’s right, then. They would say, well, we’re gonna tear out all this curriculum that you guys put in and we’re gonna put in curriculum that supports our party.AndThey wouldn’t like that.FRIEDMAN: You can imagine the sort of perpetual cycle we might get into where every four years we just, swap everything that’s taught in public schools, one curriculum for the other. And so, yeah, I don’t think, like, I don’t think the answer is either political party or either partisan ideologues dictating the bounds of what we’re able to know, and we’ve seen. We look, we’ve seen efforts to do that in of all kinds across the political spectrum. The issue we’re seeing right now in particular is a kind of weaponization of that government control at a level and sort of scale we’ve really never seen in the United States before. And like people will make comparisons when I talk to ‘em about, the censorship of schools today and universities and how it compares to oh, book bands in the 1970s and eighties, or McCarthyism or, the Comstock era, which is, even earlier or bans on teaching evolution in the 1920s, which led to the famous Scopes Monkey trial.And the reality is that [00:22:00] actually the combined efforts today in 2026 that include individual universities, individual school districts, municipal bodies, governing boards, state legislators, and now the federal government all working more or less in one way or another to exert this kind of political and ideological control over our public educational institutions.That is actually all of those other moments in one way or another, combined. It is actually unprecedented and it is at a scale. That this country has never reckoned with. I mean, this is different, And I don’t think, I don’t think people appreciate enough, for example, that some of the federal governments, and directives in the past year, particularly concerning things like patriotic education, quote unquote, or remaking the Smithsonian or insisting that any public funding for libraries or monuments or other public cultural and arts installations needs to support a patriotic notion of the United States.And it has a set of, very particular definition. I don’t think people understand that actually has its closest parallel in laws that have been passed in Russia and in China. That’s where that comes from. That’s the language. It’s almost verbatim. So that’s the kind of thing that United States has actually historically been against.Now, that isn’t to say that there couldn’t be different priorities, when we think about federal investment in, in the arts and the culture and the history and, memorials and things like that. But there has been a kind of understanding that there should be. Openness to diversity of views rather than rigid restrictions on how people are allowed to think about this and how they’re supposed to allowed to represent it.Does censorship actually work though?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And, and, there’s this, i, this extreme naivete also, I think in that, especially in regard to school libraries or public libraries that, they, have this idea of what if we remove [00:24:00] these books from the libraries? Then the students will not know about these things.And it’s like, well, guess what? teenagers are going to be looking up stuff about sex. Guess what? Teenagers are going to be looking up about, gender identity. Teenagers are going to, want to read about atheism or, whatever. We know, whatever topic you can imagine as an adult.Teenagers are going to be interested in it because they’re a lot smarter than a lot of adults realize. I think.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I, I think there, there is this question, I’m often asked, well, doesn’t the book banning just. Drive people towards it or make it more attractive in a way. And I do think on some level, the bands are not totally effective for a time. When we think about the scale of this, we’re not just talking about like one taboo book.We’re talking about like whole libraries being utterly censored. So now that’s a lot of material that some teenagers may not have any. Means to access whatsoever. if you are talking about, people who still have access to Amazon and other opportunities to access books, sure there they have other means, but that’s by no means universal.In fact, the very purpose of the public library is to ensure that there is a kind of universal access to those materials.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, there is, that’s ultimately who these laws really do end up hurting the most is people who can’t afford to buy a book on Amazon or tea or, kids who don’t have access to somebody who they can talk to and trust about their sexuality or whatever. Like that’s who is being is being harmed by these, repressions ultimately.And and I would say that. I mean, if they feel their ideas are true, then argue for them. Put them, show why they’re right, [00:26:00] instead of trying to censor the other ideas you don’t like. I mean, ultimately that’s, and that works for anybody, I would say.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I often say, when people want to shut something down, that it would be much more powerful to speak out against it. It’d be much more powerful to debate it, to debunk its ideas, to make a persuasive argument about why those ideas are wrong. snuffing out, an opponent or a different ideology when you use, the power of the state or other sort of, mechanisms. in the long run you’re not testing your arguments, you’re not gonna build up the ability to. I think make a compelling case. And so, yeah, I think it’s always just much more important to encourage people to lean in and engage. And maybe that’s uncomfortable. Maybe disagreement is uncomfortable, but we have to remember that censorship is always gonna be worse and it always spreads.one said, one group censoring another, it’s gonna red down, and it’s just sort of a ping pong of censorship. And then, what are you left with? Nothing.Fake free speech absolutismSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and we even saw this during the COVID Pandemic where people were calling for, harmful ideas to be removed from the internet. And look, those ideas were bad and they were incorrect, but. And they shouldn’t have, and, the companies shouldn’t have promoted them which is really what they were ended were doing ultimately.But, trying to get them blocked and banned, like that’s, unless people are committing fraud or, committing a, some sort of illegal act. The government really can’t be involved in the, in things like that. Whereas, of course, if private actors want to do something, say, well, that’s not allowed on my platform.That’s up to them. But like, the government has no place in this regard.FRIEDMAN: one of the, [00:28:00] surprising ironies, I would say of the past year under the Trump administration in particular touches on that very question of public and private with regard to private universities where, certainly the First Amendment is something that protects speech at public universities, but it’s been all these private universities who have been put under tremendous pressure concerning their federal research funding and other sort of threats of, department of Justice investigations and, threats of losing that funding, et cetera. And, it’s been, again, time and again the private universities who are being brought to heal in one way or another, and targeted. And so interestingly, they have actually greater freedom to resist in some sense. Government dictates because they’re not public institutions, they don’t have to be neutral to, with regard to speech.But nonetheless, we’re seeing that, they’re the ones that the administration has been targeting. Less so with private schools. Only occasionally have I seen. Proposals for state laws that would seek to restrict teaching in public schools compared to, sorry, excuse me. In, private schools at the K to 12 level.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, to be fair, I mean, some of the private universities have definitely stood up for their rights at Harvard University being, one of the biggest ones. And, but yeah, Columbia University definitely has not. And you, the thing that they haven’t realized, the ones who have knuckled under is that.Giving these concessions against your, free speech. That isn’t, it just invites more attacks on your freedom. It doesn’t protect you in any way.FRIEDMAN: Well, no, and you’re, I mean, it goes around, comes around karma. We can think about it different ways, but also, today’s book Bans are going to create and teach a generation that what they should do with ideas they don’t like is censor them. They were already getting [00:30:00] that idea. That idea was already spreading. Now it’s getting worse. Maybe you could even say that elements on the right took that from elements on the left, you know that ideas can be harmful and therefore speakers can be harmful, and therefore books can be harmful, et cetera. I mean, to a certain extent, sure, you can read a book and it can affect you, but I always hesitate to suggest that these things are so harmful that the answer ought to be, erasure, banning, prohibitions, et cetera.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the, and, it’s gotten worse in the sense that so after, trying to say, well, the social media companies were mean to us with regard to our misinformation on vaccines or whatever. Now the administration is also trying to say, well, and and they had some lawsuits about it, which they, lost thankfully.Trying to say that. Well, the social media companies are public utilities, and so therefore they should not be allowed to have any free speech rights.They’re of their own to prohibit content which is, that’s ultimately. that’s, another way of doing censorship by saying, it’s like saying if you have a a club, you know that you’ve set up with your friends.And you have no right to, disinvite people if it’s open to the public and, that’s just not, that’s not right. And, it’s, just a perversion of this. It’s like they’ve created a fake free speech absolutism, I think. And you see that a lot.FRIEDMAN: You, you do. And maybe it’s not fake, but it’s also very inconsistent. So in the wake of, Charlie Kirk, being murdered. A university campus, that’s an opportunity for a real conversation about violence and ideological disagreement in this country getting out of control. And, to a certain extent, you saw a lot of praise for Kirk from across the political spectrum for his willingness to at least try and debate people.Now, people would say he was never really, I don’t know whether he was authentic, whether he was really debating, I’m, not even [00:32:00] gonna get into that. I’m just gonna say that in the wake of it, you saw all these politicians who started to try to crack down on. Things that professors, teachers and other people in all kinds of professions were saying, in tweets on Facebook, sometimes I was putting, maybe their Facebook settings were private, but somebody screenshotted it.And there were groups who were collating this information and trying to get basically as many people fired for speaking their minds as possible. Now, in another moment, that would’ve been the precise kind of thing that many of the politicians who were involved in amplifying this. Their party was known and basically making a name of themselves as being the ones who, believe in free speech and don’t wanna be snowflakes and, wanna make sure that, freedom of speech is our most, most cherished liberty. And yet, here was this effort to punish people for things that they thought and said as opposed to saying, look, this was a heightened emotional moment in the country. And look, I think it’s hard. It’s just hard for someone to remember that actually if people are engaging and leaning in and disagreeing fiercely, that’s actually a robust democratic public square. It’s hard to get excited about that anymore. I know. But yet that’s actually, it’s meant to be raucous. That’s how change happens. Jostling forces speaking passionately, who would want, like. Inevitably, the more we, wiggle away those freedoms and kind of soften everyone’s speech, we’re losing something really important. And I, I, think about those impacts not just about on like democracy or political argument, but like those impacts on art, on culture, on feeling, on emotion, on storytelling. And I don’t wanna lose that.Responding to the ‘parents rights’ canardSHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. Well, so let’s, so I, think a lot of people who were watching or listening are, they have a, to this show, they have a, commitment to free speech and, sending up for. People’s ability to, write [00:34:00] and to say what they think. So, but I, wanna if just kind of go through some of the arguments that they might hear if they are trying to stand up in, for their local library or stand up in the school district.So, let’s just maybe go through a couple of these arguments. So I guess one of the, probably the biggest one that, that we often hear is, well, you’re saying parents don’t have any rights. About how their children are educated. Is that what you’re saying?FRIEDMAN: Well, no.I think that’s, absolutely a caricature. There is a notion that has been pedaled that like. Parents must, I don’t know, have full and total control over their children and what they can learn in schools. Or any, anything less, like parents are losing their quote unquote rights. I, resist any notion that says that one person has rights that, include control of somebody else.like there’s autonomy of the individual. And it’s not to say that parents don’t have an important role in like steering the upbringing of their children being involved in schools of contributing to how a group of young people in a community learn. But this notion around parents’ rights, it just takes us down this. very difficult road where like more and more, I guess the idea is that the students and the young person has like less and less rights and no rights at all. what about the rights of the individual to learn and to explore and to, figure out who they wanna be in the world.All of those things are also important in any notion of a liberal democracy, and at the same time. We do have to recognize that there is something valuable about what we call like a public education, a shared public education. when people come to a common understanding and have a common foundation of, information about something in the world, that’s what we think about when we think about like, history is something that, people may not have learned together yet.They, [00:36:00] share. Similarly when you think about it with like regard to different identities, there has to be some baseline understanding of, that people of different identities. Ought to be free to express them and ought to be free to, be represented in schools and other venues. And so, I, just fear that sometimes this notion of parents’ rights is being taken to such an extreme where there’s almost like nothing left of the notion of. The public rights, the civic rights of everyone to learn together, to, meet people who are different and look like. I don’t think things in K 12 or higher education are perfect with regard to like the freedom to learn by any means. But at the same time, there is something valuable in having curriculum set by experts that everybody gets to learn. And I’ll say just, I’ve seen this parent’s rights rhetoric. Also be extended to meaning that a parent should essentially get like a list of, every topic that ever might come up in schools and almost be able to tick off, that which they, don’t want their kid learning like, Timmy and CA doesn’t wanna learn about slavery, but Billy and CB doesn’t wanna learn about the Holocaust or in CC, they don’t wanna learn about L-G-B-T-Q people and in cd Well, they don’t wanna learn anything about, I don’t know communism. Well, how is the teacher possibly supposed to like, answer a kid’s question that touches on a, f kid asks a question of a general nature and the teacher’s not allowed to answer it. Not allowed to provide a book direct someone to the dictionary or an encyclopedia. I mean, it just becomes completely unworkable.And so it sows the seeds for the unworkability of public education as a concept when we open the door this wide. And again, for a long time. Individual parents have had ways to engage where, let’s say there’s like a common read in a classroom of a group of students and a parent really doesn’t want their [00:38:00] kid, they meet with the teacher, they come up with an alternative.Maybe it’s not the best solution from a freedom to learn perspective, but it protects the, freedom and the opportunity for everyone else in the class to learn. Without that being interrupted. But right now all the solutions that are being put out are essentially since Censorious ones for everybody.It’s like, well, some parents don’t like that book, so now that book can’t be in the classroom. some parents didn’t like that lesson, so now that lesson can’t be in the curriculum. That kind of thing.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it’s, I mean, yeah, taken to the extreme, this is basically saying some parents have more rights than others, is essentially what they’re trying to do. That this, because it is always a tiny handful of people. And, in many cases these are not even parents of students in the district who are challenging materials.And they’re basically saying, well, if I don’t like a book, then, if one person out of a hundred doesn’t like a book. Then the 99 can never be exposed to it and that’s a violation of those parents’ rights.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, and, apparently. I mean, apparently everybody else’s parents’ rights, so to speak, don’t matter anymore. And my colleagues a group I work with in Florida, the Florida Freedom to Read project has make been making this point. In that state we’ve seen all sorts of books removed from schools, and they have made the case that the removal of the books might, serve some parents’ interests, but it’s against theirs.Well, how do you resolve that? I mean, if you have a community where 49% want a book and 51% don’t. Does that mean those 49% shouldn’t get it? Now let’s flip it. Let’s say 1% don’t and 99% do, or something like that. Well, does that mean that 99% should, get it? What about that one? How do you honor that?I mean, there’s always a balance to these. It’s, not easy to come up with solutions that are going to appease everyone, but I just want to sort of urge everyone to step back from the intense edge of this and recognize that. In the United [00:40:00] States today, most of us are gonna learn about things. Most young people are going to have moments where they, see a television show or read a book or read a newspaper, and this is a good thing to be sort of curious about the world and have opportunities to pursue that curiosity and all these efforts to try and control that and cabinet it in.Not only do I think that in the long term they’re going to backfire, but I think they’re really damaging. For what we might think of as like the study habits, the culture of freedom that we want to instill in young people, that’s what’s at jeopardy here.America’s declining global reputation under TrumpSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, we’re seeing that with regard to the United States’, standing in the world in surveys now, that there was one that I just saw recently that showed thatthe US had kind of moved from the middle of the pack in terms of, reputation from 30 down to the very lowest tier in just one year.and this, chilling effect, it, really does make people who are going to be the future, bestselling novelists, bestselling, children’s book authors or scientists or, whatever the future leaders of the world who might have wanted to come here. Now are not going to want to come here.And, ones who were born here, a lot of them might feel like, well, I don’t feel welcome here anymore because I’m trans or, and so, I’m gonna go move to this other country and invent a way to, cure cancer or whatever. Like that’s really what we’re talking about. when we are cutting off the, marketplace of ideas.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I mean, and, we see that kind of anti the anti internationalist. Trend is also, something that’s been impacting higher education and is bound to trickle down to K to 12 as well, which is this idea that the country should in fact, make it much harder for foreign scholars to come to the United States for students to study at universities.And there’s been all sorts of ways in which, the federal administration [00:42:00] in the past year has tried to do this. Complicating visa processes undermining research by, many international scholars. Even things like the destruction of U-S-A-I-D. They used to fund research in this sort of partnership manner where the federal money went to American universities to do projects with partners in other countries doing research into things like agricultural and, global, global health. And all of that has been decimated in the past year. All of the good standing of the United States and the world and all frankly, like the progress on a lot of research projects a lot of which, run on a timeline. So let’s say you had a, cancer trial or something like that, or something else that you were planning over multiple years.Well, what happens if you’re in year three of five of expected funding and all of a sudden the government changes the rules and violates the contracts? Where they were gonna give you more funding. I mean, it is just disrupted a tremendous amount of activity, intellectual activity, teaching, training research, just that search for knowledge.And so it’s had this massive effect and there is this kind of, America first, let’s call it mentality that, just seems totally it seems interested and totally disregarding the fact that like a lot of American culture. Thrives on its exchange around the world. When a, German, symphony comes to the United States, or a play produced in Namibia, and you can see it in New York City, whatever it is, this is what makes the United States enriched and ha, it’s the diversity of that culture enriches the country. And it’s being, yeah, it’s being just significantly decimated this year.Responding to false ‘patriotism’ argumentsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. I wanna circle back to one of the other arguments that we hear also sometimes from censorship proponents, which is in, the educational realm that, they say they want to, that they’re trying to have patriotic education and that, having, and so removing authors that criticize historic figures, particularly some [00:44:00] of the founders of America or whatever, that, they’re saying that authors that tr cite true facts about.Thomas Jefferson or George Washington or whatever, that they are anti-American by, and that they want students to hate America and hate themselves. Like that’s a thing I often hear. What do you what would you respond to that?FRIEDMAN: Yeah, I mean, I think it sort of gets back to that question from earlier about how we reckon with truth. and if a truth is uncomfortable, does that mean we shouldn’t teach it? Or it’s important to teach, to move forward? I think there is an entire history of this country, which has been suppressed for a long time, and efforts like, whether you agree with every aspect of it or not, there have been these efforts to. Confront that things like the efforts in Tulsa related to the race massacre from the 1920s, are an effort to tell that story. And again, it may make people feel differently about the country, but it doesn’t have to. You could, you can be just as, you can be just as upset about the censorship of these stories or just as proud of. The reckoning with them and learning about them, it’s not a given that, stories about the past are gonna make you feel a certain kind of way. And I certainly, don’t think that’s a reason to well lie to kids or hide, the complexities of, information that they might encounter.So, I think a lot of that also just seems to tread on. I don’t know assumptions about how people are going to feel when they learn things that are not actually reflective of how young people may actually feel, but how, I don’t know, adults feel about it. And again, like how I feel about history doesn’t mean. Something did or didn’t happen, it, the idea that would be the metric for how we conduct research or how we teach people about the world and how it came to be, what it is, it just doesn’t seem, it doesn’t make sense to me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it doesn’t and, there’s no right. [00:46:00] Not to be offended. I mean, like that’s the other kind of terrible ironies of this current moment is that, as you were saying earlier, that they had spent decades railing against snowflakes and political correctness and, all these things that they said were bad.and, there were, in fact some over reaches in that regard. And some people that were that their speech was wrongfully terminated. But. This idea that you don’t, you have the right to not be offended at hearing somebody saying their own personal experience. Like you don’t have that right?They have the, right to say what they want, and if you don’t like it, then you know, don’t watch it.FRIEDMAN: I mean, it is always like this, notion that if you don’t like a book, you should never have been, I don’t know, started reading it at all. Like how do you learn, I mean, puzzle this one for me. How do you learn to I. How do you learn to dislike something? How do you learn like your own taste in a book or a movie or a TV show? It’s ‘cause you start, engaging with it and then you don’t like it and you turn it off. So like, that’s not a reason to suppress, your opportunity to have encountered a thing that you didn’t like. And in fact, many popular things. There’s someone who doesn’t like, for everyone who like loves, I don’t know, show popular right now, heated rivalry, there’s someone who will tell you, yeah, well, it’s not really that great a show. And I didn’t like it. I didn’t wanna finish it, whatever it is. So, I always say like, okay, you don’t like the books, close the books. You don’t like the books. Don’t take the books outta the library. But don’t stop the library from stalking the books for other people who might wanna read them. A lot of books aren’t so great. That’s okay. A lot of books, people differ in, their own taste in what they think is excellent, in what they think is a great book. What they, are moved by when they read. We should be embracing that diversity of experience with regard to reading materials.[00:48:00] CertainlySHEFFIELD: Yeah, it’s if you don’t like Indian food, you’re, you’re not gonna call for it to be banned, the Indian restaurants to be banned. Nobody does that. and, the, thisFRIEDMAN: not yet.SHEFFIELD: for your mind?FRIEDMAN: Yeah. I mean, Not yet.Well, and I think like that’s important to recognize too, is that, similarly, literally in the way that we might embrace like the marketplace of ideas, the marketplace of food, the marketplace of books. The, point of a library is to serve a diverse community, in particular the point of a even a university, with its wide range of courses, yes, certainly there’s, required courses and electives and all that. But on the whole, it has evolved to serve a wide range of professions, a wide range of fields, and just the way in which that’s being constrained and narrowed by political agendas is very concert.The value of literacy and readingSHEFFIELD: It is. Well, and now aside from some of the censorship though, issues that, which you guys do a great job at one of the other things that. Penn America also is very good on, is trying to teach people about just the general value of literacy and of reading. Because I think that’s, under, its own threat in and of its, independently of people trying to censor it.Is that, just this idea that, well I should, I should only watch little YouTube shorts or Instagram stories or, whatever. And like, that’s. That’s a serious issue. the decline of literacy. And I’ve heard a lot of teachers and professors who have been in that business for a long time, and they, say that the students are, not reading as much and they’re, not able to pay attention as much.And that’s a, that’s really bad thing.FRIEDMAN: Yeah, you would think, that’s a thing that people could, agree on and get behind and say, yeah, literacy and the freedom to read is a good thing. And, it’s known that if students are, motivated to be interested. In [00:50:00] their own reading material, then they’re gonna be more likely to read it.If you have this is one of the key things with like graphic novels is understanding that for librarians, why do they have graphic novels in a high school library? It’s ‘cause a lot of ninth graders are actually still reluctant readers. a lot of them haven’t developed the skills to read a long book, and they are interested in reading graphic novels that speak to them. And there’s also this idea that comes from like a stereotype about comics, which has been carried over, which is the idea that reading a book, you know. A paragraph of text page after page is better than something with pictures. The pictures are juvenile in some way, but I can tell you reading contemporary graphic novels. A lot of times what you are decoding on a page is actually much more complicated. There, there are ways in which information storytelling can happen in a graphic novel that can’t happen when all you have is sentences on a page. It’s just, it’s a very different experience. I’m not trying to say that one is absolutely better than the other, but there’re different.And why should we be trying to ban something that a group of artists and writers have gotten really skilled at. A group of publishers are putting their, creative energy out in the world with, and a group of writers and audiences are interested, sorry, a group of readers and audiences are interested in accessing that.Like, why would we interrupt in that, circuit, so sort of some moral standards about how we ought to control the circulation of a thing that through that sort of free market Okay. Of creativity and what people are interested in. It is working fine. And so again, you see that kind of effort to clog it up, to intervene, to exert control of a political and ideological nature.And we could see the same thing about, education, the freedoms learned, access to graphic novels, what the Smithsonian got out there on a, in plaques and other things. And, in each case, it’s an opportunity for us as citizens to [00:52:00] recognize. What we’re at risk of losing and what we can stand, against in, in, in standing against censorship.SHEFFIELD: And ultimately, standing against government censorship and control. I think that is the ultimate pro-American act. I mean, and let’s be clear about that.FRIEDMAN: Certainly that is one of the things that animated, motivated, the original revolutionaries who were rebelling against that. Absolutely. And and that notion, that spirit, let’s call it, of critical thinking, that has been a key part of what people around the world think makes American education. We’re talking about public schools or universities, good and unique and what we’re known for. Why do we sacrifice that and, try and ruin it?SHEFFIELD: Exactly. All right. Yeah, so this has been a great conversation, John. So for people that want to keep up with your stuff and you guys have any recent reports you wanna plug or something like that?FRIEDMAN: Sure, yeah. This month in January, we released a few weeks ago a new report called America’s Censored Campuses 2025. It the subtitle is Expanding the Web of Control, and it’s a comprehensive report on the 2025. Censorship of universities. We look at the growth of state laws and where that’s at in terms of controlling academic curriculum and other measures in universities.And we look at the rise of efforts to control universities from the federal government, which have, reached, as I said earlier, unprecedented levels. And you can find that at pen.org.SHEFFIELD: Alright. Sounds good. Good to have you back.FRIEDMAN: Great. Thanks for the conversation. Take care.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you are a paid subscribing member, you have unlimited access to the archives and I thank you very much for your [00:54:00] support.And if you’re watching on YouTube, please click the like and subscribe button where so you can get notified whenever there’s a new episode. Thanks for joining me. I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Minds are not things, they are processes. Who we are is what we’re doing. That is especially true of minds in societies. The news we see daily during the second Trump administration is proof of this, not just in the monstrous and inhumane policies but also in how these ideas are being opposed.What America is and will be is undetermined right now. We are in a liminal state, a time of transition.Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984 broke the Democratic Party’s leadership class. Ever since then, most of the party’s elites have operated on the principle that the American public is far more conservative than it actually is. Instead of forcefully stating what they stand for and why, most national Democrats are deathly afraid of becoming the next Michael Dukakis or Howard Dean. This is a global problem: left party leaders consistently overstate the conservatism of their constituents, as multiple political science studies have shown.The mainstream media has been similarly feckless; the executives, editors, and anchors have been unwilling to consistently tell the public the larger vision of what the Trump regime is trying to do: completely repeal modernity and replace it with a techno-feudalism in which the American Colossus is torn down and replaced by regional “patchwork states” that are ruled by authoritarian corporations and religious cults.As Trump, Stephen Miller, Russell Vought, Kristi Noem and the rest of the regime have been illegally impounding allocated funds, arresting anyone looking suspiciously foreign, and posting on social media about their goal of deporting 100 million residents (roughly the same number of Americans who are non-white), the Americans who elected the likes of Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have had to come to realization that most of our purported “leaders” were not going to do much of anything to stop Trump from destroying the country. No one is coming to save us but ourselves.(Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have been welcome exceptions, forcefully speaking out and utilizing legal maneuvers to block Trump’s deployment of military troops in their states.)After a full year of Trump’s disastrous leadership, the economy is hobbling into a tariff-driven recession, America’s international standing is in tatters, and the president’s popularity is at record lows. To district from all the failure, de facto president Miller decided to jump on a misleading viral video about daycare centers run by Somali immigrants living in Minnesota. Trump almost immediately was on the case, lashed out at them with a racist attack that included Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar:“We could go one way or the other, and we’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country,” he said in December. “She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage. These aren’t people who work. These aren’t people who say, ‘Let’s go, come on, let’s make this place great.’”Shortly thereafter, the regime launched what it called Operation Metro Surge, a massive influx of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol agents that began in Minneapolis, Minnesota and later expanded to the entire state. Thousands of heavily armed paramilitary thugs began swarming into neighborhoods, shopping centers, and even places of worship as they arrested thousands of people, including many who were American citizens, legal immigrants, and even babies and small children like 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos.Faced with a paramilitary invasion that the judiciary was unwilling or unable to stop, Minnesotans took to the wintry streets, braving sub-freezing temperatures to attend massive protests and to track and report the activities of ICE and CBP thugs in neighborhoods everywhere. And unlike in other states targeted by the Trump regime, thousands of Minnesotans have extensive experience coordinating protests against his first administration after the murder of George Floyd, a black Minneapolis resident killed by police in 2020.“Our community groups, our unions have never ceased to continue to try to work together and create inflection points,” union organizer Chelsie Glaubitz Gabiou told France 24. “So we have a high level of trust. We don’t all agree on everything that we’re working on together here, but we know we cannot be fractured – and that we have to do this together.”That is exactly what Renee Good and Alex Pretti did. They were two regular people who stepped forward to help their community and nation while the Republican-controlled Congress and judiciary are refusing to do anything to stand up for their supposed beliefs. Working tirelessly for days on end, they were mercilessly killed at point-blank by Trump’s thugs.Despite the Trump regime’s efforts to smear Good and Pretti as “terrorists” and “assassins,” the public is increasingly able to see through the lies, and it’s sent the president’s approval rating on his top issue of immigration to an all-time low of just 39 percent. The backlash has been so pronounced that the administration announced that it had demoted Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol “commander at large” who had helmed the operation that led to the Pretti shooting.Trump also announced that the government would be investigating the incident, and there have been multiple reports that Miller and/or Noem may lose their jobs. And there’s more good news: A judge has temporarily blocked Liam Ramos and his father, a legal asylum applicant, from being deported. Even the tech industry, which has been so eager to lick the Trumpian boot, finally has some prominent leaders speaking out against his totalitarianism.And, at last, the majority of congressional Democrats have stepped forward to demand the impeachment of Noem and the de-funding of ICE.These are wonderful victories worth savoring. They are proof that standing up to tyranny works. The peoples of Greenland and Europe also demonstrated this as well, as they pushed back aggressively against Trump’s totalitarian threats to invade and colonize the frozen northern island, discovering what investors had figured out long ago: Trump Always Chickens Out. Because he’s a bully.We can do this. But it will not be easy. Even if all goes well, we still have three more years of Trump in the White House. And there’s no guarantee that it will. But whether American fascism triumphs is not a foregone conclusion either.That’s because dictatorship is a state of mind, not just for the demented criminal who is currently the president of the United States, but also in the minds of the citizens.Some of us, like the beanie-bearing Russian asset Tim Pool, yearn desperately to submit to tyranny. The rest of us are learning that freedom only exists if you believe in it—and fight for it together.This is the Liminal States of America.Membership BenefitsThis is a free episode of Theory of Change. But in order to keep the show sustainable, the full audio, video, and transcript for some episodes are available to subscribers only. The deep conversations we bring you about politics, religion, technology, and media take great time and care to produce. Your subscriptions make Theory of Change possible and we’re very grateful for your help.Please join today to get full access with Patreon or Substack.If you would like to support the show but don’t want to subscribe, you can also send one-time donations via PayPal.If you're not able to support financially, please help us by subscribing and/or leaving a nice review on Apple Podcasts. Doing this helps other people find Theory of Change and our great guests. You can also subscribe to the show on YouTube.About the ShowTheory of Change is hosted by Matthew Sheffield about larger trends and intersections of politics, religion, media, and technology. It's part of the Flux network, a new content community of podcasters and writers. Please visit us at flux.community to learn more and to tell us about what you're doing. We're constantly growing and learning from the great people we meet.Theory of Change on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoryChangeMatthew Sheffield on Social MediaMastodon: https://mastodon.social/@mattsheffieldTwitter: https://twitter.com/mattsheffieldBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/matthew.flux.communityThreads: https://www.threads.net/@realmattsheffield This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary It’s now one year into Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, and while it’s been just as chaotic as the first, this term’s chaos has been so much worse.But invading Greenland, burning down NATO, partially taking over Venezuela, and slashing science budgets for no stated reason might seem random in many ways.But in fact, it isn’t. If you’ve read a lot of right-wing political theory and religious theology, you can actually see what his top aides like Stephen Miller or Russell Vought are up to. The larger goal is to literally destroy modernity and replace it with an undefined form of Christian techno-feudalism.Luckily, our guest on today’s program, Matt McManus, has done the reading. A longtime friend of the show, he’s the author of the book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism. He’s also an assistant professor at Spelman College. In this discussion we talk about how Trump and Trumpism fit into the bigger picture of fascism, authoritarianism, and right wing epistemology.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Trump, Nietzsche, and Antichrist America--Inside the bizarre and hateful ideology of JD Vance--Why atheist libertarians and Christian fundamentalists actually have a lot in common--Trump is trying to destroy America’s world-class scientific leadership--Why far-right Republicans are going after universities--The social science revealing why Trump loves the poorly educated so much--Why ancient Greek Skepticism has become surprisingly relevant--Renee Good and the problem of other mindsAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction05:45 — Non-religious anti-intellectualism in right-wing thought09:07 — Nietzsche as the canonical far-right thinker13:19 — Trump’s domestic policies are basically the re-institution of serfdom15:43 — The importance of sci-fi authors in anti-democratic political thought21:33 — Utopias as political lodestars25:20 — Horseshoe theory and its limitations29:44 — The historic relationships between 20th century fascism, conservatism, and left-wing ideologies34:47 — The folly of leftists who team up with reactionaries38:38 — ConclusionAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: One of the things about the second Trump term that I think that a lot of people are observing is just how much more insane he is—or at least this presidency is, I’m sorry, I should say. People are seeing all these policies like tearing down various scientific funding, or education, or foreign policy organizations, et cetera, et cetera. And people are like, why the hell is this? Why is he doing this? This makes absolutely no sense.But it actually does make sense, if you have done your reading, I think you would agree, right?MATT MCMANUS: Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I’ve recurringly pointed out is there’s a long anti-intellectual bias in the history of conservative thought including intellectualized bias that’s been articulated by conservative intellectuals. Right? And you don’t have to take my word for it. you can just go back and read Joseph de Maistre, for example, who’s been a major influence on a lot of MAGA intellectualism, movers and shakers, people like, Curtis Yarvin, who everyone seems to know right now, or Oran McIntyre, who’s his disciple.De Maistre says, flat out, that look, what people ignorantly call philosophy is fundamentally a destructive force. Why? Because it encourages people to think critically for themselves. It gets a society that’s filled with all kinds of intellectuals are coming up with new ideas about how government and society to be organized.We don’t want that, right? That says we’re way better off having everyone instilled with their belief system from the cradle to the grave, what he calls, dogmas, right? People should approach [00:04:00] their beliefs and especially approach existing systems of authority, dogmatically and by and large he says, society will run better that way.And if that seems a little anachronistic, you can flash forward to Roger Scruton, who I would argue is, the greatest English speaking conservative philosopher of the latter half of the 20th century. In his book, the Meaning of Conservatism Scruton used to say that there’s something deeply commendable about what he called, and I quote, “unthinking people who accept the burdens that life imposes upon them without trying to politicize them or without looking for recourse from existing systems of authority.”And the reason that Scruton thought unthinking people were better than thinking people, is unthinking people are far likely, more likely, again, to show allegiance to their betters, and to pay deference to existing authorities, right. I would frame it as they’re more likely to be willing to accept their subordination to those that conservatives think they should subordinate themselves too, right?So all that you see with this Trump administration is in many ways a very virulent form of this anti-intellectualism. Casting a very, wide net where for decades, American conservatives has seen as JD Vance was put it, professors as being the enemies, the media being the enemies, because professors in the media have a bad habit of saying, ‘Is that exactly true? Probably isn’t.’And now they just have the power to act upon that, by, at the very least, stripping the resources from the media and academics that they need to do their job and actually try to ascertain the real world. And in the worst case scenario, as we’ve seen in the Trump administration, is actively trying to censor and chill the speech, those who tried to decide against it.SHEFFIELD: They are. And, they’re also in, in particular, going after science quite a bit.MCMANUS: Oh yeah.SHEFFIELD: I mean there’s just so much chaos and whatnot.Non-religious anti-intellectualism in right-wing thoughtSHEFFIELD: And there’s a particular animus that these people have, and it isn’t only just the religious either, I think. And we’ve talked a lot on this show about the religious animus towards science. But it’s not just religion that is motivating [00:06:00] this.MCMANUS: No, absolutely not. Right. I mean, look Joseph de Maistre was an arch reactionary Catholic. And a lot of the anti-intellectual in the Trump administration right now are clearly come from a religious evangelist perspective. but you know, Roger Scruton was by and large a secular philosopher, even if he had certain things that he wanted to intimate about the sacred, again, the anti-intellectual—SHEFFIELD: And Stephen Miller is not religious either, so we should say that too.MCMANUS: Yeah, exactly right. And Curtis Yarvin, describes himself as a militant atheist as well. And so does Bronze Age pervert and many of the other intellectuals and movers and shakers that are kind of ideologically inspiring Trump administration. Again, what animates them about intellectuals isn’t that intellectuals are espousing this or that idea that’s contrary to what they want people to hear, that’s part of it. The big thing is that intellectuals are doing their job at all in whatever field, right? Because the problem with having too much discourse, too much discussion too many controversies is it leaves open to question who’s supposed to be in charge and who gets to call the shots in society?And fundamentally, conservatives just don’t really want that. Right? They prefer, again, a society where people know and understand their place. Right? As a conservative author, James, Steven once put it they want people to think that to acknowledge and affirm a real superior is a great social virtue.And sometimes this can take pretty fear form. One of the more. Under examined intellectuals of the pre-Trump era as a figure called Wilmore Kendall who I wish everyone would read. So Wilmore Kendall was a major conservative intellectual in the 20th century. Very smart guy. Don’t want to deny that, right?Very learned, very thoughtful. But he wrote a quite a thoughtful essay called, was Athens Right? To Kill Socrates? For those who don’t know Athens put Socrates on trial for the crime of philosophizing and asking probing questions and most thinking people. Since, the BC has said Athens was wrong to execute Socrates, right?Socrates, as he articulates, was doing something valuable by raising these kinds of probing questions, getting people to think more deeply about what is [00:08:00] justice, what we should do, et cetera. Kendall disagrees, right? Kendall says, actually the conservative elite who are running Athens were absolutely right to execute Socrates.Because even if they weren’t always able to answer his questions, and even if Socrates was right that Athens wasn’t a perfectly just society. His form of questioning posed a serious threat to the established social order. So of course, elites were entitled to get rid of him. They did not want the social order change and it was not in their interest to see the social order change.So Socrates should have drank the hemlock for the sake at least, of the conservative elites that were running at the country or accordion to the conservative elites that were running Athens at the time. And Kendall’s idea is not, or Kendall’s are the. The insight of Kendall’s piece is not hard to extrapolate, right?He’s directly targeting what he calls the John Stewart Mill School of Thought that sees society as better organized if there’s open discussion, open debate, free rights to liberal expression, et cetera, et cetera where everyone can weigh in. And everyone should feel free to criticize society.Kendall didn’t want that because he thought it was disruptive of respect for authority and conservatives today, really, again, ibi very deeply of that spirit.Nietzsche as the canonical far-right thinkerSHEFFIELD: They do. And. It’s notable with that Kendall piece that it’s actually a direct echo of Friedrich Nietzsche’s, where he has an entire section in there called the Problem of Socrates. and, I think that is one of the, I mean, there, there’s so many leftist French misreadings of Nietzsche that are just so moronic, frankly, in my view. And they only read the early part of Nietzsche where he was a bit more libertarian, don’t read any of his middle or later output. And he says, I mean, in his essays that yes, I don’t like Christianity, but actually, the real problem with Christianity is Socrates.And that Socrates is the one who got this whole slave morality thing started, in the Greco-Roman world, and then that [00:10:00] infected Judaism. And so he’s the real villain here. Jesus was just, kind of a a Buddhist guy out there, saying, do your own thing and leave everyone else alone.That reading of Nietzche, which is the correct reading if you read his later books, it seemed a lot of people on the left don’t seem to have done that reading, I would say.MCMANUS: No, absolutely. Although I’d like to point out in defense to the left that there’s been a serious effort to reevaluate our addiction to vulgar Nietzscheanism, which I think has undermined our effectiveness for a very long time right now. And you don’t have to take my word for it.SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah. Well, Domenico Losurdo, yeah. Great book.MCMANUS: Domenico Losurdo are more recent and Daniel Touch, right? No, I don’t agree with tu and Losurdo about everything they say about Nietzche, but they’re pretty clear, right? That he is a reactionary aristocrat, at his very core. So, whether or not there’s, some insights that you can glean from him that are important, Nietzche is a brilliant thinker. I don’t want to vulgarize him in that way. Right. And there are insights you can glean from him. But you should be very clear about what he himself was committed to.And just to kind of connect this to Trumpism a little bit, I think that’s not only leftists who’ve made the mistake of reading Nietzsche as a kind of proto-libertarian many on the American right did for a long time also. Think about people like Ayn Rand and a lot of her disciples. They saw him as a, fundamentally an individualist at heart. Somebody who was pushing against bourgeois, petite bourgeois moralism with its evangelical tendencies and creating more space for free inquiry.The expression of various forms of individual identity. Well, Nietzche himself actually repudiates that reading of his work pretty emphatically in an unpublished work called The Will to Power, right, which was organized by his sister and is somewhat problematic, but does consist of stuff that he himself wrote in the world of power, Niet says, I am not an individualist, right? My philosophy is not about individualism. It’s about what you call orders of rank, right? So some people are indeed entitled to expressions of their individuality to be free of the shackles of good and evil.But those are the people that Nietzsche thinks are worthy [00:12:00] of that kind of liberty. Namely the kind of superior persons the new aristocrats of the future that he thinks society should be organized around breeding. But he is very clear and beyond good and evil, for example that for most of the rest of us what we deserve is, as he puts it, slavery, right?Because he says the only kind of society that has ever been able to culturally produce anything of value that has been able to resist the kind of sirens call of nihilism is a aristocratic society. And no, a Socratic society can function. As he puts it without a slave class. Right. There’s a very good researcher who pointed out that Nietzche talks about slavery hundreds of times over the course of his ure.And there’s almost not a single instance where he’s not describing it in. Positive even rap sodic terms, he thinks it’s absolutely necessary for any good society. And given that you shouldn’t be surprised again when you see people like Braun’s age pervert or God help me, raw ag nationalists, all these MAGA influencers coming out of the woodwork, espousing a kind of vulgar tism and saying horrible things about how most people in the world are bug men.Or how women are just roasty who are only fit to, be sexually assaulted by these powerful individuals. Nietzche himself would never be so crass or so stupid. But you know, there’s an instinct there towards suggesting that there are better kinds of people or higher kinds of people and lower kinds of people.The better kinds of people are entitled to do whatever they want to the lower kinds of people in the pursuit of their allegedly grand projects.Trump’s domestic policies are basically the reinstitution of serfdomSHEFFIELD: Yeah, and you see it also with their, domestic policy as well, because, the, domestic policy of the Trump administration is to eliminate. All social welfare, payments or organizations. And then at the same time to bring back menial labor jobs and make those proliferate.But you will, they will be private sector jobs and they will not be unionized. And so, this is basically. They are trying to bring back a serf class. I mean, that is essentially what they’re doing. and you see that also in particular in the, writing and, speeches of Peter thi, like he’s pretty almost [00:14:00] explicit in saying this.MCMANUS: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, changes his orientation. Anytime, he’s on camera, right? He’s a pretty well read guy. But, one day he identifies with a kind of vulgar Nietzscheanism. The other day he has nice things to say about post liberalism. The next day, he re identifies as a libertarian.And then all of a sudden, he’s financing Curtis Yarvin, who’s, secular atheist monarchist. Right. What I think the common thread though is, that Thiel has always been attracted to anti-democratic forms of politics. And this goes all the way back to his essay from 2009, I believe, the Education of a Libertarian where he says, look, Barack Obama has now become president.This is disaster, right. For those of us in, let’s call it the yacht class, right? The reason it’s a disaster for those of us in the yacht class is Barack Obama, mainly supported by women, minorities and welfare recipients is promising to tax the productive creative class in order to redistribute to the unworthy.We can’t have this and the education of a libertarian is fundamentally about how he’s realized that. If there’s a cont that there’s a fundamental contest as he understands it between democracy and liberty and, These circumstances, he chooses liberty over democracy. Now, of course, the liberty that Thiel is talking about is the right of people like him to exploit all the rest of us with the rest of us having no political agency to actually do anything meaningful about it.Right? And I don’t see that as being meaningful liberty at all. But you know, even though he shifted the tone and the tune a little bit the fundamental messages remain the same. Right? Democracy is dangerous to people like Thiel, who want to have all the money in the world to spend on rocket ships, to send them themselves to space and those that consider worthy.And consequently, we need to undo democracy by any means necessary.The importance of sci-fi authors in anti-democratic political thoughtSHEFFIELD: And one of the interesting things also about Thiel in this context is that he was asked one time, by somebody, a young person that was seeking advice from him. They said, well, where should I be looking at to get ideas about startups, to have a [00:16:00] new company? And, he said, you should read mid 20th century science fiction. And that’s, I thought that was extremely notable because there was a tradition, like a real tradition of reactionary intellectualism, beginning with de Maistre and Nietzsche, but Scruton was basically the last of that line. And he was a lonely fellow for most of his life. Didn’t have any peers I would say in his milieu.And, which is, and it’s notable that this sort of post-libertarian, post-democratic framework that we did see that came out later, it began with Ayn Rand. So there’s a reason why Thiel recommended these 20th century sci-fi authors like Robert Heinlein and for instance, like his The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress is, Elon Musk said that’s one of his favorite books. And for those not familiar with it, that book is a story of people who are living on the moon and they are never contacted basically by the Earth government, but they have to send them all their money and so they, have a revolt and kill all the Earth people and declare their independence and have rugged individualism in space. And that’s basically the plot line of pretty much all of these authors like they, they genuinely have no concept—there’s a famous meme that argues that libertarians are like cats, that they are sustained by a system which they have no understanding of, and also disdain.And I think that’s notable that they really, their intellectual tradition did in fact shift to fiction. And so, that’s why instead of having long explications of arguments and responses to critics, instead of that, we just have these endless monologues of Ayn Rand characters and Robert Heinlein characters, in particular, and they’re not responding to critics.Like one could say that [00:18:00] Robert Nozik for instance, was somebody who was right-leaning, but this guy was not a reactionary like these people. And so he was capable of reading others and responding to them. And like you see that with the second Trump administration. Like they are literally, as we’re recording this today, the FCC Chairman announced that he’s going to enforce equal time rules against late night comedians. Like they literally cannot respond to the arguments of the opposition because they don’t understand them. I would say.MCMANUS: No, absolutely. I mean, look, you don’t have to take my word for it. Just read the take downs of the left by authors like Jordan Peterson or Gabby Sad. And, these aren’t random YouTube influencers. These are academics who should know better. Most of ‘em are of no value whatsoever, right?I’m not even convinced that they’ve actually read Fuco, let alone Marx, let alone, have an understanding of the kind of nuanced arguments that appear in those traditions. But we’re talking about Thiel in this, at this Thiel and this attraction to science fiction. There’s a really good book by a Marxist author called Frederick Jameson who some of your listeners might be familiar with. Dense author, so take him a piece at a time. But it’s called Archeology of the Future which is his analysis of the role, a political role that science fiction has played in different social imaginaries. And one of the things that he points out that’s very sharp, and I don’t agree with Jameson about everything is that science fiction has often been a source of utopian speculation for different political actors about the futures that they want to see brought into being.And I think this choice of the word utopian is. Done thoughtfully by Jameson. Because when it comes to things like the Libertarians who talks about quite a bit libertarian sci-fi authors he points out that they did have a utopian vision for what the future was going to look at. And this should make us extremely wary of the insistence of some conservatives or some on the right.That fundamentally it’s the leftist who only have a monopoly on utopian ideas or speculative ideas about how the future should be organized. And that conservatives standeth, wart history, young stop are at the very least, slowed down. To these [00:20:00] utopian reformers, right? Jameson pointed out, if you read Ayn Rand or Heinlein, who you mentioned, they very clearly want a radical change to the status quo.Even if they frame this in nostalgic terms, right? We need to go back to these older kind of warrior or individualistic ethics. The idea is that fundamentally the future needs to look very different from the president. And that’s going to mean undoing a lot of what liberals and progressives have achieved, right?And Thiel is very imbibed an awful lot of that, right? He really does seem to think that he is a John Gault type figure that the present is so decayed because of woke leftism, democracy, et cetera. That the only thing to be done is for the truly productive class to take over and rebuild society the way that it should be organized or should have been organized from the very beginning.And in these kinds of circumstances, the kind of irony is that a lot of the old, truly conservative critiques of the left actually pertain to the speculations that they’re making. And particularly, the kind of policies that figures like the maga movement are trying to put forward.They’re really trying to break systems that they don’t fully understand in order to bring about a new world that exists only in their head. And that is going to be an absolute disaster, if they try to realize it in practice.The difference I think between left wing utopias and right wing utopias is that I think that sometimes left wing utopias are actually attractive at the level of theory, even if they break down in practice.For the utopias speculated upon by people like Thiel or Heinlein, or Rand, I think are just unattractive right from the get go. And they look even worse when you try to put them into practice.Utopias as political lodestarsSHEFFIELD: They do. And one of the sad ironies of our current politics though, is that this utopianism that absolutely does drive this reactionary-- and, I do distinguish it from conservative that this reactionary activism they, work tirelessly for it. And they see it as, and we are going to destroy modernity and replace it with our utopian vision.And [00:22:00] by contrast, when you look at the institutional leaders that are in the center left, or we’ll say conservative to the left they seem to, have no utopian impulse whatsoever, generally speaking. And, they think that this is the best of all possible worlds. And the, and it’s why I would say that, the, that you do see, I mean, you did see for instance, in the 2024 election, the, a massive shift in support among young people toward Donald Trump.A guy who is, you couldn’t depict, you couldn’t imagine a, more stereotypical boomer person, bloated. Rich, selfish lazy, stupid. I mean, he’s literally every caricature of a boomer. And yet he has had the highest support (among Republicans) of young people in the United States in, since 1984, Ronald Reagan.So like there, there’s a serious, serious problem among people who are against reactionary ideas that they have no interest in inspiring people or realizing that there are a lot of things wrong with the current system.MCMANUS: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, just to your point about Trump being like the Ultimate Boomer I went to one rallies in 2022 with a buddy of mine who’s a documentary. And I don’t think I heard a single song that was, anywhere newer than from 1986. You know what I mean? I remember, yeah, there was something from born in the USA.It was the most modern song at the Trump rally. So that’ll really give you an indication of his. So we say somewhat dated taste right. But you know, on the kind of point about utopianism and the left I, think that Juda Slar has a really very sharp point to make. Right. Juda Slar, for those who don’t know is the author of a seminal essay called The Liberalism of Fear.And it’s famous for being a liberal critic of utopianism. Well, even sclera said, look. It’s very, there’s a longstanding tendency for center right liberals to say utopianism has only led to bad effects over the course of the 20th century. We’re better off without it. And she said, look, any movement that is entirely [00:24:00] devoid of any utopian aspirations isn’t long for this world.Because then you don’t really have any energy, you don’t have any creativity, you don’t have any drive. All you’re there to do is to sit there and offer intellectual apology for the status quo. And inevitably when somebody, people become dissatisfied with the status quo, they’re going to turn to your enemies who do have ideas about how things should change.Right? So this is where I think that. Liberals need to recognize that this defensive attitude that we sometimes take, even if understandable is not enough in the contemporary era, right? People are clearly dissatisfied, they’re turning to alternatives. And I think that what we need to do is have ‘em turn to liberal alternatives to a neoliberal status quo that is clearly run as course and is no longer sustainable.Now, I put forward. Liberal socialism as, one possible alternative that we could move towards inspired by people like Thomas Payne and Rawls and John Stewart Mill, et cetera. But there are others out there as well. But you know, you don’t need to kind of side with me on this. What I just encourage my fellow liberals to do is to be open-minded.About the fact that a little utopian energy and a little creativity about how the future can be better from the past is not only intellectually a sustainable project to engage in. I think it’s very much politically needed right now. because you’ve seen across the world, right? Politicians with a couple of exceptions that just come forward and say, I stand for what we’ve been doing for the last 20, 20, 30 years.Have, by and large not done particularly well.Horseshoe theory and its limitationsSHEFFIELD: No they haven’t. And one of the more unfortunate things I would say though with people who maybe want to have an alternative to. Neoliberalism is something that you you have written about recently, which is this idea that that some people have that well, maybe we can make co common cause with these far right people.And there’s something, a, there’s something that, there, there dissatisfaction with the status quo is something that perhaps we could leverage. And that’s has been a very common and dangerous mistake of further left movements. And you talked about some of that history, so if you could maybe just briefly recite about that.Obviously we’ll have a link to your, [00:26:00] piece as well.MCMANUS: Yeah, absolutely. Right. So, during the Cold War, there was a very common theory, that sometimes called horseshoe theory, that became popular, particularly amongst, center right, liberal commentators. Right. And, the idea is that. Fundamentally, fascism and communism, are just two sides of the same coin, right?they’re cosmetically different, but fundamentally they’re both species of a closed society or a collectivist society, whereas liberal stand for an open individualistic society, right? and I think that by and large horseshoe theory, is a very lazy way of looking at the world because it kind of divests you from any responsibility to understand.The opposition in any kind of brand, any other way. And to recognize that even on the far right there are very substantial differences in terms of regimes, ideologies, et cetera. and Lord knows there are bajillion different flavors of Marxism out there, right? Everything from statism to anarchism to, a narco cynicism, right?And they all look at and aspire to very different things, right? Now saying that I do think there is a kind of intellectual out there, that fundamentally understand themselves or, has become politically agitated or animated, by opposition to liberalism and liberal centrism. And in these kinds of circumstances, if your fundamental opposition is to liberalism, sometimes you do see figures switch from the far left to the far right or vice versa, right?a very good example of this, in MAGA world right now would be somebody like, say Nick Land, for example, right? Nick Land began his career as a, critical theorist, very influenced by deli beard, all those postmodern types that you mentioned before. And gradually he moved away from the left end of the spectrum towards, a dark enlightenment perspective.That’s very proven, very amenable. Two people like the Elon Musk and Peter Thiels of the world, right? since long story short, he essentially says that the world will be better off if we have these kind of tech bros in charge of everything. and if we militate against democracy. but these figures are by and large, fairly rare, right?And again they only really emerge if the primary [00:28:00] motivating force behind the projects is anti-liberal. in which case they kind of shift from one end of the spectrum to the other, depending on what they think is the other geology that. Most equipped, are more likely to get rid of the liberal order.Right. Overall though, I’d say look liberalism, socialism, and progressivism have a lot more in common with each other, than either do with, political, right, right. Liberalism, socialism, progressivism all of us believe fundamentally that all people are at least morally equal. Even if we different our capacities, interests, et cetera, and that we’re entitled on the basis of our moral quality.Quite a lot of leeway in terms of how we want to live our life because we should be allowed to make choices about how we’re going to live our life without interference from the states, other people, et cetera. Even if those choices might end up taking us to some pretty bad places, right. as they so often do.Right. the political right has a very different kind of philosophy about how. Society should be organized. I think actually no one captured this better than Fa Hayek where he said the unifying feature behind conservatism, and I’d say this is true of the right generally, is this conviction that there are recognizably superior people in society.And these recognizably superior people are entitled to more respect for their agency, their wealth, their political power, you name it, right? They’re the superiors in society. They get to call the shots and all people on the right. Whether, the more moderates or the more extreme, are committed to this idea in some way, shape or form.And I think once you recognize that ideolog ideologically, you can realize that if there’s going to be a dialogue and if there’s going to be conciliation, it’s far more likely if you’re liberal to happen with your left wing peers. And if you’re on the left, is far more likely to happen with your liberal peers, than with those on the right who just hold a fundamentally different worldview to either of us.The historic relationships between 20th century fascism, conservatism, and left-wing ideologiesSHEFFIELD: yeah. And then also the actual history as you were talking about in your Current Affairs piece, shows that the very first people that Adolf Hitler and Mussolini went after were the leftists, like the people who thought that they were doing something [00:30:00] tricky and conniving to collaborate with them.MCMANUS: Yeah, absolutely. So, this is, there’s a famous poem by Martin Nie Moler, that actually had the first section of bridge very often when it was translated into the United States. And it goes, first they came for the communist and then I did nothing because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the socialist and I did nothing because I wasn’t a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionist and I did nothing because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did nothing because I’m not a Jew and You get the picture right. And there’s a reason for this, right? so, the fa fascism in Italy without a doubt, was influenced in its very early stages by some species of, socialism.Particularly things like, so surrealism, right? this idea that there was going to be a general strike and that we were going to go break the shackles, of the status quo. But, that was very, quickly abandoned after the fascist came to power. Often with the support of center right liberals.Big business, the church eventually, of course, the monarchy, all the kind of conservative factions within Italy. And the reason why all these conservative factions liked fascism, is because they thought the fascists were extremely effective, at breaking communist skulls and attracting large segments of world population through populist rhetoric away from the appeals, of working class agitation, a Mussolini in power.Often awe implanted various austerity programs that were intended to discipline, the workforce in addition to smashing trade unions independent, workers, movements, you name it. Right? and this one, an awful lot of applause from people like, Winston Churchill, for example, in the 1920s.or the famous right wing economist, Ludwig von Misa, right? in his book, liberalism describe fascism as fundamentally having saved Western civilization for at least the moment, right? In Germany, the circumstances are actually even more brutal, right? in Mont Comp. Hitler makes no doubt or no, hey, about the fact that he considers Marxism to be, as he put it, a Jewish doctrine, that rejects what he calls the aristocratic principle of nature.because he says fundamentally, socialist and Marxist and communist [00:32:00] believe in a world where all men and women will be brothers and sisters and will cooperate for the social. Even if they think that you need a class revolution in order to achieve this. and Hitler says, the Ariss Socratic principle of nature holds that there will always be conflict between races, and one race.Of course, the Aryan race is destined to rule overall after it’s defeated. Its, Jewish and other enemies, right? Ly racist kind of philosophy and beyond just, the kind of ideological anti Marxism, anti socialism, anti-communism hither, much like Mussolini. Found that on his route to power, it was very easy, and necessary indeed to cooperate with conservatives, big business, the military, especially, who had the same interest in Germany, as conservative forces did in Italy, namely quashing the communists and socialists, who were very popular in Germany at the time.So Robert Paxton, the author of The Anatomy of Fascism, points out that. It’s quite like that, that Hitler would’ve been a footnote in history if it wasn’t for the cooperation of so many conservative forces in Germany, to bring him to power, expecting that once he was there, he was going to crush the communists and the socialists, and bring about, kind of restoration, of the vi ha mine conservative empire, which of course, Hitler had no intention of doing.and Richard Evans, the author of, The third, the rise of the third, or sorry, the third Reich in power. Right. Makes exactly the same point. Evans is a professor of history at Cambridge, probably the world’s leading expert in Nazism. and he is emphatic about saying it was actually conservatives that brought Hitler to power, right?Without the conservative forces in the country, Hitler would never have taken power. and that’s because they thought. By and large, he shares a lot of our say our aspirations, right? He wants a restoration of the traditional family. He wants to re-arm Germany. He wants to make Germany great again, right?and undo, the tragedy of Versailles. And, putting him into power and financing him is going to help us achieve a lot of our shared goals, right? even if, many German conservative had a certain contempt, for Hitler’s populism and his youth and [00:34:00] strange ideas, right? and once in power, Hitler.Absolutely erected many conservative figures not to mention big business to positions of enormous suspicion in the new European order that he was going to create. Right? and the result was, of course, sending tens of thousands of members of the KPD, the Communist Party and, the SPD, the social Democratic Party of Germany into concentration camps, in many circumstances.They were the first victims of Nazi aggression. So this kind of claim, that I see people like Dinesh DEA make sometimes, that the Nazis were socialists or the Nazis were liberals, right? he tries to make that suggestion also. it’s just absolutely bogus. And, the people who are trying to make the claim are either willfully, distorting history, for ideological reasons, or they’re just stupid to be quite blunt.The folly of leftists who team up with reactionariesSHEFFIELD: yeah, they are. And well, and, but it’s also stupid on the part of people who are leftists, kind of ilian mentality as you reference, like to think that teaming up with fascists to destroy liberalism. Is not going to create communism. Like they don’t understand that like this will never happen.And that while perhaps you can rhetorically, work with some of the voters or people who are in the grassroots that are sympathetic to some of these ideas, the elites themselves. So like people like Josh Hawley or Ted Cruz, or. JD Vance, who, they do in fact hate capitalism. But they hate it for a very different reason than you do.And what they want to create in its place is monstrous.MCMANUS: Oh, absolutely. And look, I don’t want to deny that there are leftists again who gravitate towards the right, and the far right. a very good book on this written by a friend of mine is called, against Fascist Creep by Alex Reed Ross. and he talks about how, Starting in, the mid 2010s, many on the far right, especially in digital spaces, have actually tried to, brand far right politics and leftist sounding language consciously.[00:36:00] Right. to try to entice progressives to kind of side with them. a good example of this would be, eco fascist movements, right. Who are yeah, we should get back to nature, right? Getting back to nature will mean getting back to the law of the jungle where the strong prey upon the weak.So actually there’s an ecological dimension to fascism that, they. Play up in order to try to solicit, sympathy from various environmentalist movements. Right? or another good example that I’ve personally seen, to my enormous dismay, has been, the efforts of, various Dugan Knights, followers of Alexander Dugan, right?Alexander Dugan, up until quite recently when he started chumming around with people like Tucker Carlson, was militantly anti-American, right? for pretty obvious reasons, right? You saw America as a Russia’s fundamental geopolitical ally. And, consequently, Dugan has been very willing to espouse, militant anti-Western rhetoric characterizing the West as an imperialist force that is, traversing the globe invading countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to kind of expand American power.And Ross, I think quite convincingly suggests that Dugan does this knowing, that even if ma, his main audience is always going to be the far right, you might be able to entice a couple of anti-Western. Leftists into his coalition. if their fundamental convictions are, the West is just responsible for all the problems of the world.America is all the great Satan, and we’re willing to align ourself with anyone in order to kind of undermine it. So it is a real process. Right? but I’d also like to point out, that if we are going to talk about the proportion of figures who kind of. Made their peace with MAGA or moved over to maga.leftists I would not say are the major members of that coalition, right? Even if they don’t, there are a couple of Bernie Trump voters, I mean, think about, the sheer volume of right wing libertarians. People like Rand Paul, for example. who started out being tri critics of Trump, critics of the MAGA movement, and just completely conceded to a lot of his calls for.tariffs stronger borders, et cetera, et cetera. because they thought it was to their political advantage. there’s even a term, that’s been developed in libertarian circles. [00:38:00] genuinely libertarian circles describe it, border Arian, which I quite like, people in the von Misa, s.Factions are often characterized as boards, right because they’re committed to freedom for all, but not for, migrants. Right? So I think that, we should recognize that there are a lot of different reasons why people will gravitate towards far right politics. And there are a lot of different ways that the far right will try to reach out to different constituencies.While the left definitely needs to inoculate itself against any of those kind of temptations, insist that there are plenty of classical liberals and libertarians that should take a good, hard look in the mirror. If they made to think that. While Trump was passing some tax cuts, so really he’s a classical liberal at heart.ConclusionSHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. All right, well, we’re coming up on the end here, so, if people want to keep up with your stuff besides buying liberal socialism. What else? Do you have advice for that?MCMANUS: Yeah, absolutely. so we have a, myself and Dr. Ben Burgess have a new essay collection coming out soon on Gia Cohen, which people can check out for Paul Gray McMinn. GIA Cohen was a Democratic socialist author who taught at Oxford for a long time. And has some very interesting ideas that I’m quite critical of, but nonetheless are worth looking at.And I also have a new essay collection coming out in July actually which includes contributions from liberal currents editor Paul Kreider and Florian Maywell, and another academic. it’s called what is Liberal Socialism. and it’s only 11 bucks. I organize it because people used to point out how the academic book that I released, the Political Theory of Liberal socialism is a little pricey and a little scholarly.this is a much cheaper, much more kind of accessible kind of guide to some of the main themes of liberal socialism for people are interested.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Sounds good. All right, well, good to have you back again.MCMANUS: Yeah. Thanks Matt. Great to talk to you.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to flux.community where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes.And if you are a paid, subscribing member of the show, you have unlimited access to the archives and I thank you very much for your support. It really means a [00:40:00] lot. This media economy is very bad right now. and so I really need people to support the show. We don’t have any connections to right wing billionaires or left-wing billionaires or any other billionaires, so we need your support to keep doing this; and I am really grateful for everybody who is one. And you can also support the show over on Patreon as well. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux, and if you’re watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button and do the notifications thing so you can get notified when we do have a new episode or a new clip.Thanks a lot. I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode SummaryThe shocking murder of Renee Good at the hands of federal immigration shock troops in Minnesota earlier this month was part of a larger outrage, the Trump regime’s fascistic deployment of tens of thousands of violent and poorly trained, but very well-armed paramilitary troops against people across several major American cities, arresting people who look or sound Hispanic.Since Good’s murder, the Trump administration and numerous right-wing media figures have attacked Good and her wife as “domestic terrorists,” who were engaging in illegal speech—and thus she supposedly deserved to be killed for temporarily impeding ICE officials before trying to drive away.Of course, this is rhetoric is wildly hypocritical given that Trump and his supporters have claimed for years to be so very concerned about protecting girls and women from trans people in sports and public restrooms. Aside from that, however, the right-wing attempt to “other” Renee Good is in support of the larger reactionary campaign to deny the legal rights and humanity of immigrants living in America.But the belief that immigrants (and Hispanic-appearing people in general) deserve to be treated as less-than-human is itself part of a larger dilemma that philosophy has dealt with for centuries, the problem of other minds. Since no one has direct access to any other person’s experience, other people’s moral rights can, unfortunately, be difficult things for many of us to understand. Far too much of politics is about whether some people are real and whether they should have rights.Liberalism used to talk about things like this more, and so in this live collaboration between Flux and Magic + Loss, we decided to explore the topic from several different angles.Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction13:03 — Can alternative scripture interpretations save religion from fundamentalism?17:22 — Creating a list of books for deconstructing former fundamentalist Christians20:47 — Conservatism is not reactionism23:54 — Jeffrey Epstein and misogynist libertarianism37:04 — Theory of mind and empathy46:18 — Rene Girard and Nietzschean Christianity57:54 — Why reactionary Catholicism is becoming more popular in the U.S. far right01:06:31 — Somatic experience and a politics of determined loveAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Hello everyone. Well, I guess this is your live, Virginia, so maybe you can introduce it and then we can go from there. You want to do that?VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN: So this is a co-hosting and I’m on the back foot when it comes to a good introduction here, but, Matthew Sheffield and I are-- Matthew is a cherished interlocutor of mine. He’s a philosopher, and I am me, and just a random Gen Xer, trying to pick my feet up day after day. And, and I, think we want to talk among other things about Rene Gerard and empathy and and, trivia like that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. and there is just so much to talk about, but I guess I think maybe we can start with a news hook, which is the recent Texas A&M decision to tell a philosophy professor there that he could not teach Plato’s Symposium in a class about ethics and moral controversy.HEFFERNAN: Right.SHEFFIELD: And to me, like, not only is this the inevitable product, of course, of, this, right wing censorship, that we’ve had in this year, but it’s also that it shows just how completely incoherent they’re, because on the one hand they say, well, we are here for western, western values and that we value the, traditional ideas and morality and all that.And it’s like, well, you clearly haven’t read the Symposium of Plato.HEFFERNAN: Well, is Greece really the West though, Matthew? I mean come on!SHEFFIELD: I know, that Plato guy.HEFFERNAN: I think it’s, I think it’s Colorado, maybe the [00:02:00] California,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, hah. Well, and just to summarize it just a little bit though, for anybody who hasn’t read it, Plato’s Symposium, it’s a work that is one of his most famous ones within philosophy, but it’s not one that I would say the general public is probably very familiar with. And that’s because, well, the whole book is about sex and gender and love and philosophy, which, philosophy as a discipline of course has no problem, has always discussed these things.But in the right wing movement of today, they don’t read the books. Like they don’t even read the Bible like these people, that was one thing—I used to, I was, born and raised as a fundamentalist Mormon, and one of the things that I discovered about Christian fundamentalists is that almost none of them have read even one book of the Bible in its entirety. They don’t, they just literally show up to church and they listen to whatever the pastor tells them, and they might read, like five or six verses, or a chapter 10. That’s it.HEFFERNAN: So why take the trouble to ban something?SHEFFIELD: Well, and that’s the thing, like Plato as a philosopher, and of course, so many ancient authors like Aristophanes and, all, and, I mean just, like you could go down the line, you could pick almost any ancient classical author or the Bible itself, and there’s all kinds of stuff in there that would be considered inappropriate, for, by right-wing Christians. My, my favorite Bible story is the story of, Jephthah, who was a judge in the book of Judges, a prophet who, decided, well, I’m afraid I’m not going to win this battle that you’re telling me to fight God, so you gotta do something. You gotta promise me that you’ll do it. And if you, and if, you will, if I win this battle, [00:04:00] I will kill the first thing that I see when I come home.And lo and behold, the first thing that he sees is his daughter. And so, in the same text in which, Isaac, the human sacrifice of Isaac is, said, oh, isn’t it great that we didn’t have to, he didn’t have to kill Isaac.Well, here you have another text. Whoever was like, yeah, it was a good thing to kill your child for God. And like, right. But, most, of course, most Christians and most, super Orthodox Jews have never heard that story or have any idea.HEFFERNAN: Matthew, and one of, one of the things I think that makes you such an interesting philosopher is that you have done something that very few of us have done, which is grown up in a totalizing episteme, and questioned it, and pulled out the threads of it and done what evangelicals called deconstruction, right.Parenthetically, I love that deconstruction is now. I think if you put it into Google, into Gemini, it will explain deconstruction, not as an invention of Jacque Deida, but as a practice of evangelicals, not destroying their faith, but dividing it, separating it into its component parts and evaluating them-- and, and kind of coming to terms with how this thing was built around them, which is. Exact. I mean, I can’t imagine a better application of deconstruction as I understand it from Derrida. It’s, it’s, just beautiful. And I wish he’d lived to see it, in fact, because for Christianity to use the tools of literary criticism, it’s exactly right to find a way to understand what, anyway, you did this yourself.It with, with a, like a very esoteric system. The books of the testimony of the angel Moroni, the, oddities of the Book of Mormon, the, weird readings of a kind of weird 19th century, brought together theology. But that is [00:06:00] binding for so many people and interesting for so many people and literal for so many people.And just one by one, I mean, it’s. You must consider it one of the great philosophical achievements of your life that you were able to pull the wires out of your head. So dexterously, that you now, have managed to expose yourself to, so many other philosophies. You were your own gly. I mean, if to get back to the greats, you were Socrates to yourself.Why do I believe this? why would I possibly believe this? and I think that puts you in a, uniquely good spot to think about these things. But, and I also think that if you believe in literal truth of the Bible, and I’m, I, don’t know I, that I know what that means exactly. Like, it--SHEFFIELD: Well, they don’t know either.HEFFERNAN: Right? But I don’t even know what believing. I don’t think any of us knows exactly what it is to believe something. In some ways that means you don’t read it, right? Like I believe in, a geocentric, I accept on faith or I believe in that the, I’m sorry, the heliocentric. I believe that the sun’s at the center of the universe, but, so I don’t read it.I just don’t read a lot of astronomy because it’s there. It’s sat down. Why do I have to look at it? Right? And if you believe in little truth of the Bible, then interpretation doesn’t matter. Then why does your reading matter?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and that is, I mean, that is functionally I think how they, get away with it.But it’s also the, it’s different from what you just said in, in your thought process, process about centrism, because. They don’t care about proof. Like that’s the thing that I think a lot of people who are,HEFFERNAN: But I don’t care about, but I don’t care about proof for other things that I just think are true like that.I don’t, I mean, you don’t have to. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone convince me, I’ve never looked up in a book why, what the actual proof is for the center of the universe. and that’s just an obvious one. Forget about everything else. I mean, a television working [00:08:00] or whatever else. the things that I believe in, the literal truth of, or a proposition that’s just been handed to me are the things I don’t read.Once you read, you’ve opened up the possibility of interpretation, exegesis, even if you’re simply committing to memory. I interviewed a, several months ago, a Chinese dissident who, grew up in China and the two things they had to do with the writings of Chairman Mao were memorize them and then memorized a reading of them, an interpretation of them.So they had to shield out any possibility that they, in any meaningful way, were reading. in addition to what they were. So lest you open up a slight possibility that you have a hermit, bring some hermeneutics to the occasion of reading, you now have something else to step in your brain in that place.And I guess to close the loop, you did this with the text you grew up on, and you did essentially what Nietzsche says, we have, again, Nietzche is someone you’ve written about. We, God’s dead. We’ve killed him, you and I, we killed him because we read and studied the universe with science and came to the conclusion that our, that this God didn’t exist.And you did the same, I think with the texts, I imagine with the texts of Mormonism, and the teachings of Mormonism. You read them closely and like lots of evangelicals, you probably came to elders and said, I don’t understand. Why would God have someone kill his daughter? And, and then you thought, well, I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, right?Read the books, ask the questions, and then the whole thing falls apart. I mean, is that how it went for you? Actually, I don’t want to, I don’t want to guess.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. that is how it went. And this is why I would say also that, when people have questions about, let’s say vaccines or something, or that they shouldn’t be told, oh, you can’t ask that.It’s fine to ask these questions. It’s fine to, [00:10:00] to, ask why. Like, that’s, that is the most fundamental idea. Like it basically all cognition devolves to “what is this?” And “what do I do with this?” And so if you can’t, if you forbid people from answering those, asking those questions, then you’re not going to be, you’re not going to be a viable political movement, I would say.But independent of that, yeah, like, so with Mormonism, I, I was, told, well, don’t worry about that. God will answer that in heaven. You don’t have to think about it. And there were some people that, so Brigham Young University used to have this academic pseudoscience department called the Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormonism Studies. And basically it was like an apologetic organization. and I read some of their material and it was just so virulent and, nasty, and, just, saying, well, how anyone that would question these ideas, it’s just stupid and malignant and vicious and satanic and, et cetera, et cetera.And it had no, effect on me because, I was like, well, you’re telling me that you don’t have the answer, when you act like that. And then once I opened myself to the idea of, well, what if this isn’t true? And all of these doubts that I had clicked through in my mind, perfectly because then I realized, oh, if, it’s not true, then all of these things make sense.And that’s, that is the, dilemma that people who value science and value reason in our, time, we have to induce that kind of thought process for people. Because I, I had to do all this by myself, like there wasn’t anyone in my personal life that was helping me along the way or, [00:12:00] teaching me about introducing me to ideas.I was just following things on my own. And that’s, most people don’t have the time for that, or the inclination or whatever, whatever reason they’re not going to do it. And so we, so people who believe in sound thinking, we have to, be out there and then, and join the fray everywhere as much as we can.HEFFERNAN: Can, I ask you a question? What might, when you went to your parents or your, elders and, asked these questions, what might they have said? When you ask these questions, what might, some, wise person have said to you that would’ve kept you in the fold? In other words, could Mormonism have, sort of invented its own secularism, had it been able to accommodate, accommodate your answers instead of kind of killing off Socrates, the you person?right. So.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Can alternative scripture interpretations save religion from fundamentalism?HEFFERNAN: Yeah. could they have said, oh, let’s, I’ve, that one is, that’s a real, incongruity in the text. And what could that possibly mean, and why would that be included? Well, maybe let’s consider the possibility that the Bible’s a set of metaphors, or let’s consider the possibility that God is erratic, or let’s consider the possibility that there are a lot of texts, other texts, or as Sarah just said, that Mormonism is Satanism.there, if someone had said something like that to you, would there be a way that you would still be a, philosophical Mormon and you might’ve expanded the department at Brigham Young to include real science?SHEFFIELD: Well, I, there are people that are doing, trying to do that actually.. and so, and in fact the, for, there’s a, magazine that’s had a conference for decades, called Sunstone, in Mormonism, that, that has tried to do that. And, and I think [00:14:00] that they, have kind of also. because Mormonism, like many, high, demand religious traditions, places a lot of, they, they tell members to be afraid of, former members or people who question.. and so, and Sunstone has basically kind of been kind of the seed of, this idea that, well, these people who are former Mormons are not going to hurt you. They’re not evil, they’re not satanic. and so, yeah, if I, had been exposed to that a little bit earlier, perhaps I would’ve cha, been able to toughen out or figure some way.But, on the other hand, on the other hand, I just don’t know that would’ve been satisfying for me because, like in Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation,” she’s right about that. That when you do start getting into metaphorical interpretation of text, you are doing violence to it, epistemic violence to the text because you are imposing your reading of it over the author’s reading. And I don’t know that I could have really done that, in the, wellHEFFERNAN: I,SHEFFIELD: that would’ve satisfied.HEFFERNAN: I mean, I just, I don’t want to go it to go unsaid that I, starkly disagree with Sontag on that point. I mean, ISHEFFIELD: Oh, you do? Okay.HEFFERNAN: Well, I don’t know who the author is in the equation and the author seems as dead to me as God.I mean, when you’re talking about you’re superseding and by interpreting the Bible, say you’re superseding what the authorial intention is that God’s intention. That would seem to be a, the case for the literal truth of the Bible or the maybe not meaning of the Bible. yeah. and, Also the words belong to all of us.There are no private languages. And so we are always making meaning of words that we, [00:16:00] that we share. But I guess, the reason I ask that is I don’t, I’m not sure there would be a Mormonism that allowed that kind of open inquiry. and one of the reasons I’m thinking aboutSHEFFIELD: it’s of hard for people.Yeah. Because like actually they get kicked out. Some people get kicked out for,HEFFERNAN: yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It’s like Mormonism, for instance, has an idea, has a doctrine. They don’t talk about it very often, and most of the non-MS don’t know it is that Mor in Mormonism, God is married and is a post-human.HEFFERNAN: Oh. ah.SHEFFIELD: And so, and God is a polygamous.HEFFERNAN: oh yeah. Interesting.SHEFFIELD: And so, actually, so even though they, currently do not practice multiple, marriages in, to living people. They actually still believe in it. And in fact, the guy who is the current president of the Mormon church, so they, they believe in eternal marriage as they call it.He’s actually married to two women. but one of them, one of them is deceased. so he has two wives.HEFFERNAN: But one of them is deceased. Yeah. but Right. Oh, I see. Eternal marriage. yeah.SHEFFIELD: So he’ll have two when, they’re all dead.Creating a list of books for deconstructing former fundamentalist ChristiansHEFFERNAN: Yeah, so probably I’m thinking about this because I’ve run into some deconstructing Christians, on tick on social media who are looking for just actively in search of tutors to, because they’ve been homeschooled, they’ve, their education’s gone awry in many ways or is non-existent. I think they started questioning the existence of hell.They started questioning some of MAGA policies and, and that was the thread they pulled and things started to unravel from there. but now they find themselves not knowing what the Federalist papers are [00:18:00] or, what their constitutional commitments are, if any, even really the difference between the private and public sectors.so you know why? A OC and Jeff Bezos are in different positions vis-a-vis the rest of us, right? Like how people get elected is versus how they get rich. and and it occurred to me maybe like in this fanciful way, but an overly optimistic way that we should do what, we did, like when I was a kid, which is, write letters to our counterpart Soviet school children and say like, we all have the same human heart.We can learn from each other, but maybe put together, people that create a syllabus about secularism, a short syllabus, essays, even if they’re, if no one’s going to read books, and do these kind of zoom. Conversations with people leaving and wanting to embrace because they’re so excited about socialism.they’ve shifted like, 180 degrees and are now, have decided that they are all in for the, left and, but they don’t quite know what capitalism is.So, and it, like that hunger to learn, that. Some religious kids have, ‘cause they want their big questions answered and, familiarity at least with the idea that they’ve gotta go back and study and what just seems like something that would make a, for a great student.But also, I mean, I would even ask listeners and readers to think about this. What would you do if you were going to give someone five essays, or documentary fragment of film, whatever, to, to try to move someone from, reactionary, evangelical Christianity and maga to, something closer to secular and liberal humanism, .Democracy. I think it’s a really interesting question. Like, [00:20:00] if you could build a little enlightenment, in, in the soul of someone and do it for yourself at the same time, because why don’t we believe those things, right? Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Like, yeah. yeah, That’s a, it’s a great idea. I mean. We, I, think that has been kind of the biggest failing of the broader non-conservative, or we’ll say non-reaction rate because, ‘cause like an actual conservative supports the enlightenment at this point now, right? And, you look at even people, in the beginning, like, like, Edmund Berger, he was, he supported reason and ideas. He was not a religious fundamental.Conservatism is not reactionismHEFFERNAN: I feel somewhat sad for conservatives because you, it always has to return to, the very first conservative you only have like hundreds of years ago. Well, if you go past William Buckley,SHEFFIELD: Well, Buckley was horrible. I mean, he wasn’t a conservative, I would say. he was a reactionary. I mean, that, that’s the difference. like when you, so in the 20th century, there were basically two figures in, in, in Britain and the us, that the right had to choose between effectively.And, one was, was Michael Oakeshott, who was, British, and he advocated for a processual view of everything. So, the cognition is a process. State craft is a process. There is no destination. There is only the responsible stewardship of the public trust.And so, he supported things like national healthcare. He, was, against, reli. He was not religious at all, in fact. And then you had, this other guy who was German [00:22:00] emigre into the United States named Eric Voegelin. And, have you ever heard of him? I don’t.I don’t. I, he’s,HEFFERNAN: no,SHEFFIELD: Basically the Americans chose him. Buckley chose him, and Buckley, in fact basically stole, Vogel’s, one of his signature phrases, “don’t immanentize the eschaton.” That was a, catchphrase that Buckley used a lot and they had on bumper stickers even, to try to make him seem like he was smart, but he actually stole it from, and soHEFFERNAN: the Escha that’s, that is the, afterlife?Yes. No. What does it mean?SHEFFIELD: No, it wasn’t so in Oh, okay. In the sense that Gellin meant it, what he meant was that he was an anti utopian. and, so the point of politics as he saw it was to well basically support, Christian dualism effectively. . and to make it be anti utopian. So make people think, well, things can’t get better, so you should just keep, give up about trying to improve things because they can’t ever be good. Humanity’s fallen, we’re stupid, we’re lazy, we’re worthless. And just accept that and get over it.And, like that, and that was basically the, idea of Voegelin. But, he dressed it up in, he was just, I mean, he was a horrible guy, frankly, and, just as one example, his, core thesis was, he was railing against what he called Gnosticism. Except Eric Voegelin couldn’t read classical, Hebrew. And then, he also had not even read any Gnostic texts because they hadn’t been discovered when he started doing his research. So,HEFFERNAN: I mean, I feelSHEFFIELD: it’s insane.Jeffrey Epstein and libertarian conservatismHEFFERNAN: It makes me, it’s sort of, it sort of feels like we shouldn’t give quarters of our brain [00:24:00] left to lately in going through the Epstein files, as they’re turned out, I think of all the intellectuals who I took seriously, who were in Epstein circle and and whose names will be forgotten, including God willing, John Searle and other people that we, that were in the group that I was in with Epstein Edge,SHEFFIELD: Oh, you were in on that, I did not realize that.HEFFERNAN: I was in edge.Yeah. and and. the fact that they, that we’re like fast finding out that for five decades, the American ruling class was depraved in the extreme and extracting everything from, women, children, and had a eugenics plan. I mean, you, it’s, like sort of more polished Q anon.I mean, it’s just, bizarre. What, or, it’s, and it’s so overwhelming to read the files. I don’t blame anyone for not looking at them, but the victims who are parsing them, especially quickly, especially keenly are finding, just example upon example of how of.All the kind of domains and spaces and idioms that were captured. And, and that includes b******t Ry departments, like evolutionary psychology, like, like all kinds of neuroscience. The new atheists, the, certain kinds of Christians that, Peter Thiel Christianity, which we, we’ve talked about Rene Gerard, some of Steve Bannon was obviously School of Epstein, right around Epstein.Journalists like Michael Wolf. and, and then, if you take the whole, just like, I think I said this in a recent piece in the New Republic, but you take the Victoria’s Secret aesthetic, right? So it’s like affecting people, whether they know it or not, a whole. Sort of way of knowing and understanding the world [00:26:00] paradigm that affects you.If you step into a mall, into a bath and body works certain sense, the way that the images of girls look, the, very, very useful girls, on the one hand, the evolutionary, that’s all Leslie Wexner program. He is Jeffrey Epstein’s biggest client, benefactor. There’d be no Jeffrey Epstein without the owner of, the, of L brands.And then at the high level, you have Harvard students in the evolutionary psychology department, much of which sponsor Pinker by Epstein, Steven Pinker. learning that, that rape is a male prerogative because something to do with wolf packs and our ancestors and lions or whatever. And so you, I just, I saw some historian, some just like white historian at, Princeton or something saying we should have listened to critical race theory and gender studies. I mean, they were really calling it, and, I mean, in some ways it’s, so vivid that we now have an actual stories and communication between and among people who were pulling the strings for conferences that introduced, David Brooks and, and Sergey Brinn and, all these masters of the universe and Uber mentioned who really did style themselves and how could you not beaded with your power in the world and see yourself as, as, opposed to slave morality as the nietzche.Perfect. Nietzsche and Overman. If you were, if you had Ehud Barack in your inbox and Leslie Wexner and Deepak Chopra and no Chomsky and Steve Bannon, and you were. You, must have felt, and any girl you ever wanted, more than a sultan, and, Hamms bin Almon. and and on and if, you were Jeffrey Epstein, you looked at your dumb Yahoo inbox and you saw one name after another like that. Some of them are asking for advice on girls. The former [00:28:00] secretary, treasury secretary, some of them are former presidents like Bill Clinton. You’re making plans to go to your special Lolita Island, pedophile island on the Lolita Express.How in the world do you not think that you are a God among men? And this is like, you’re the, yeah. And by the way, in terms of real world power, you had a lot of, they had a lot of power over us. extractive power take, like if you, just for men who wonder, can’t imagine identifying with Virginia Giuffre, just think about all the jobs you didn’t get at Harvard and MIT.think about like the books you didn’t publish while Edge was publishing every year. it’s big Question book and even publishing the works of Jeffrey Epstein in some cases. or, if you’re not intellectual, think about, any number of domains about private equity, about, about politics.I mean, geopolitics were being discussed in the same breath as Lolita.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, I think, yeah, the thing about the Epstein crimes that, yeah, it did really reveal that I think probably more than anything else is that, there was this class of people who were doctrinated, libertarian, right?Wingers, and they had been burrowed inside of liberalism. That’s essentially what we’re talking about. . and, you know, so that, and you just go and you go down the line like that. I mean, one of the things about Trumpism that’s been good in a sense is that he’s taken the mask off and encouraged, these people to let their freak flag fly and they are .you know, and then these Epstein emails, that’s, that is where they’re doing it the most. So, like Larry Summers is not a progressive. Larry Summers is not, he’s a conservative. and and like, and, that’s why I do think it’s, it is very important to [00:30:00] delineate between conservatism and reaction, but they’re not the same.A conservative and then centrist are actually, most of them are just conservative. That’s what they’re,Jeffrey Epstein’s crass statements as illustrative of right-wing epistemologyHEFFERNAN: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I think about with Edge and, and by the way, the reason that I brought that up-- through my own fault didn’t finish that thought. The reason I don’t want to talk about those like European philosophers like Voegelin, whose names will disappear, is that I fear that they are like the cadre of people at Edge who were considered these great thinkers and that, and now that we know that they were at tables, Jeffrey Epstein would ask when philosophy came up, what has this got to do with pussy?That, that was the what passed for conversation among them. I really have started to think that there are a lot of Ted talk Davos sophistry that we genuflected before in the form of airport books and even Harvard lectures and then forget about, financial policy, at the Treasury Department or foreign policy.Anyway, I could go on and on, but that we thought were important thinkers and that we’re actually in this circle. Buckley, it seems kind of quaint, it seems like this cocktail party and, in fact included sometimes people like James Baldwin. but the Epstein one is like, when they really get to be on their own, and, they don’t even have to sort of cheat out for the cameras and make it look like they’ve invite, they, they have, they invite women.so. I guess that’s the way, that’s like how, influential are these philosophers as philosophers? Like they had, this bordia power, they had power to like, make things seem obscurity wrong when you were places and you saw, as I did recently at or not long ago, at a conference, John Searle was there with someone 65 years, his junior, who didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak her language Korean.[00:32:00]And and then was quickly fired, at, quickly fired after for showing porn to students, at the Sterl department or whatever it’s called. This his own particular department. for showing porn. Yeah, showing porn to students. that guy was at the conference I met him at, with the woman that he was with.maybe, I think she was more than a teenager, but I. But not much. at that conference, he was the keynote. He had managed to get, first class E for him and for his traveling companion. and yeah, that’s five decades, he’s in his eighties. yeah. And so I, that makes me wonder, what do you do with something that the, what do you do with the Chinese room theory or whatever his legacy is?I just don’t even want to parse it anymore.SHEFFIELD: Well, we don’t, I mean, we don’t need his particular formulation of that question, to, to discuss, the, problems of ai, in our large language models as currently constituted.HEFFERNAN: But maybe we’re asking the wrong question.If the question that that, Jeffrey Epstein wanted to thought everything came down to is what has this got to do with pussy? I think it’s fair to say like, maybe he’s maybe Epstein’s gloss on their philosophical questions is pretty much the right one. And that, like even s’s question, and I don’t want to go into AI ‘cause obviously it’s not our focus today, but that maybe even URL’s way of looking at things, which incidentally, I heard him give the same talk he gave in 1980 in 2016 and .It hasn’t aged well. But but maybe he was just asking the wrong questions. Maybe the pe critical race theory people were right, but, dicing up the world of ideas into these tiny, It restricting the domain from which you can speak. And you and I have really [00:34:00] bonded over economics doing this.Parel saying there’s only one trumping vocabulary in that vocabulary . Is economics. and, the 20th century is filled with people trying to close the argument by, just pointing to something to do with the circulation of money and laws that they keep violating and changing on us, and saying, there has to be structural unemployment and this and that.Like, why did we even learn those things? They just seem out the window now. Yeah. and, and, that was a per perfect one economics as my, my, co-host at, what Rafi says that, econ, they introduce a Nobel Prize in economics. I’m not sure if Epstein’s Circle ever got that, prize, but they got a, so there’s a physicist who got a Nobel Prize in his circle in 1969.And from then on. Economists have physics envy and finance bros have economics envy. And anyone who just wants to make a dollar has, finance envy. And so everyone just like economics is just another name for Garage quick. Like it’s just people just who want to make money, who then think the most important thing to do is study economics.And I think people who want to get laid think that the most important thing to do is study surl. Actually, I can, connect that loop even more if you like to touch on your libertarian point.This might entrust you. Okay. Sort of came to prominence in the free speech, free love movement in Berkeley.And he did that. The free speech, free love, movement crystallized over panty raids, which were, a response to co-education. So you have women on campus and, men are amazed and delighted and delirious, or everyone is delighted and delirious and, and they go and start stealing brass and underwear from women’s drawers.And most women feel somewhat violated by this, but some of them feel like it’s all game, [00:36:00] all fair game. And then is this like a, is this a expellable offense and suddenly it’s a politics around? No, it’s just like expressive high spirits and hijinks and wonderful. And the, some of the girls say like, well, we’re modern women and we think that’s free speech, and we think it’s fine.Some of them say, no, I should be protected. And that seems prudish and and anyway, we’re off and running on free speech and free love, right. But it’s like this weird violation that in retrospect, you don’t have to be a prude to think someone shouldn’t come and steal your property. And then also has an element of what we’d call revenge porn now, where they’re like wearing the underwear and showing that they, taking it as a trophy and it’s not inconsistent with what has that got to do with pussy?The whole like reduction of philosophy of a certain kind to that. and you’re right, that libertarianism, right? It’s like personal freedoms comes down often to the freedom to dominate women and children.Theory of mind and empathySHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. and that’s why, so yeah, I mean your recent series that you’ve been writing about, the, problem of other minds,HEFFERNAN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Like that ultimately is actually. All politics is about it, is about what are other people and do they have the same rights as me? That’s basically what politics is about. And of course the reason why it’s such a perpetual disputation is that we do not have direct proof of anyone else’s mind.And, so, and so because of that then the moral conclusions then follow that are always, can never be objective. They are always inherently subjective. And so with libertarianism and the 1960s and 1970s, that movement was born [00:38:00] at that same time as kind of a alternative conservatism. That’s really what it’s, and. It is, I like generally speaking, it’s, I would much rather have people be a libertarian than be a reactionary. But, like I would, I probably, if you, some people, some people seem to be either genetically or, socially prone to these types of, beliefs, because they, come from cognition, and they come from, deep seated psychological impulses, like fear of death or fear of change, or, unfamiliarity.So these are things that, that, are beyond politics, beyond religion, that they, the religion and, politics come from them. yeah.And in, in essence, most of human history, we have, to think back that again, all cognition is about what is this and what do I do with it?That is literally what microbes are doing. Also, like your cells and your body. before they can do anything, they have to say, well, this is here, Whatever this is, and that cognition is built on that question, what is this? And, do what with this? And so, with regard to philosophy, this is just all, everything comes from that.So, like in the, original history of humanity, all questions were philosophy. They literally were like, that’s what, pla Plato’s Academy, that’s what, the, the Lyceum of Aristotle was doing. and they were studying all of, they were studying science, biology, they were studying physics, they were studying, ethics.They were studying, all of these history. It was all there. It was all one thing. and they were studying religion as well. And so, and so, over time as [00:40:00] religion became more institutionalized. It started to say, well, some things are inappropriate, supernatural, so that’s magic. And we’re going to be against magic.And magic is bad. And so, so you had, so then everything began to be separated into, religion, magic, and science. and essentially science and religion kind of teamed up to get rid of magic. But magic isn’t inherently wrong. It is a belief in a personal contact with, with physical phenomenon. In other words like that famous phrase of Arthur C. Clark, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So, the two dilemmas that we have right now are “what is the role of magic,” and “what are other minds?” That’s really what our two big questions in society are.HEFFERNAN: Yeah. I mean, so one of the, in this, so I, I say in this very short series about, about empathy and ultimately about religious tolerance. that, and, other minds. So empathy, so tolerance, That I talk a little bit about, and I don’t know very much, but about, William Penn who, founded the state of the Holy Experiment, the state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as a place where there would be religious tolerance and freedom of conscience.And he did this in a partnership with Tom and the affable. I think actually Tom and end, his name Chief Dom, Tom End meant the affable one. and somewhere in that [00:42:00] conversation, untranslated, right, like somewhere in, in the, somehow in the way that they communicated, they made a decision to do something, I think was very, I think maybe very radical not to debate, persuade each other, come to terms, discover that they had the same human heart, find things they had in common.And maybe, and because. Penn did not want to be proselytized to. And I think one thing when we think about education in the US is that we think about two, two, what I’m realizing about Christians doing deconstruction is that they believe that the only model for education is conversion so that someone is, that it’s sort of violence by another name.So it’s like some kind of imperialism. When you take a class at an elite university, they’re trying to indoctrinate you to sort of capture you and own your mind. And there’s not a spirit of, Socratic inquiry or other forms of dialectic or dialogue or other kinds of inquiry that where, just out of curiosity, as a curious kid, you get to say as you did, what is it with this Bible passage?Right? And then the other person can say. Damn if I know, I’ve never noticed that before. Let’s look at it in another translation. Let’s do Right. There is only, and Erika Kirk talks often about how much she loves dialogue. I know exactly what she means. She means I am totally, and Charlie Kirk was completely open to talking to the unenlightened savages and just hearing what they had to say, namely, please save me because I know nothing and then you can come and bless and save and convert me.Anyway, Penn and Tamin and agreed that they held completely, they had spoke in different idioms, they had completely different cultures. They were practically all but illegible to each other. But the one thing in common is they just wanted to be left alone to speak their language and have their lives.And so they made this wonderful agreement in retrospect, we don’t have that much of the [00:44:00] documents and pens. Sam Penn’s children actually betrayed the contract they signed, but the contract was live and let live and it was a little bit.The religious tolerance seems like such a low bar. Liberals especially want to make it something other than that, like ble, a blending of souls or great empathy, or we’re somehow all the same or that, everyone needs to learn every language so they can participate without appropriation, without exoticizing in every other culture somehow. But I think it was both more and less ambitious when Pen and Tamin said, what about you do your thing even if you believe I’m going to hell.Even if you believe your God is the true God, even if you believe you know that you know by rights, the world belongs to you. And only temporarily am I inhabiting this part of it, and I will likewise believe that mine is the utopia. Mine’s the true God. You’re going to hell, you’re a barbarian. But it doesn’t matter.We’re never going to try to persuade each other. We’re not going to try to have a circular argument about this. If we haven’t get along or trade this or that with each other, fine. But in general, we’re going to do the thing of knowing that you believe. Things that could be abhorrent to me. I eat knowing you have your own mind and anything could be going on in there.And it’s a universe. My mind is galactic to me. Your mind’s galactic to you, but, and guess what? I am just not going to come and punch you in the face because of it. That’s it. Yeah. The only restraint today is just that you are, you can sit in your house and think, God, I can’t believe how much those maga people just hate liberals.They’re just sitting there thinking, wishing Virginia Heffernan goes to hell. I think, I think Tucker Carlson has actually said that with my name, but Tucker Carlson has his mind. It is a whole universe. And just today I’m going to let Tucker Crosson have all his beliefs, and I’m going to tolerate the fact that other people believe something other than mine because how else can we oppose the violence they [00:46:00] do, except by accepting that they have other minds and then.It doesn’t matter what Jonathan Ross thought. He doesn’t get a full subjectivity that, that Renee Goode doesn’t have that. I don’t have that. You don’t have, we it, he, but we object to the violence that he did.Rene Girard and Nietzschean ChristianitySHEFFIELD: Yeah. yeah, no, and that’s, and I think that is the right framework. And this is where I think Rene Gerard comes into the picture becauseHEFFERNAN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: He essentially rebuilt Christianity on Nietzsche. That is essentially what has happened. So, that, basically even to, sorryHEFFERNAN: Matthew, do you want to just tell our pals, why, we’re talking about Rene Gerard?SHEFFIELD: Oh, sure. Yeah, so, Rene Gerard, he was a French literary critic. Most people haven’t really heard of him. because he didn’t have a lot of prominence while he was alive. But he’s much more influential now. His star pupil was Peter Thiel. And basically Thiel has dedicated his life to, sort of forcing the ideas of Gerard onto the entire world.So, so Gerard, he was a con, a convert to Catholicism. he started off as a, non-religious postmodern French intellectual, so very steep in the, the French Nietzche tradition, which I think is very badly misreading Nietzche and his project. And so, but basically he took his Nietzschean inclinations, and merged them with his new Christian faith.and then essentially kind of rewrote Nietzche, but for a Christian audience. So, one of Nietzsche’s, [00:48:00] core ideas being that all, all of society is organized around resentment or using, he, I mean, he borrowed the French word ressentiment, and that he re he recoded that to be saying it’s mimetic desire.And so all of Girard is basically kind of our rebadged Nietzsche. And of course, I’m sure anybody who’s a ARD fan will be absolutely aghast in me saying that. but nonetheless, it’s true. And, and so, so basically they’ve taken the, core idea of Nietzsche, which is, there are everything is perspective and then moved it to, so therefore we can believe any false objectively, non-scientific belief. Everything is, so basically truth is a function of power rather than a function of, a, of, proof. And, and that is, I mean, essentially what post-structuralism argues, but they are trying to do it from a point of liberating people from that. Whereas this postmodernism that we have today is essentially saying, yes, truth is power and we’re going to take it and we’re going to make you believe our power. And you really see that in this second Trump administration. I mean, basically, Stephen Miller had said, recently, yes, we live in a world of power and that everything is, it comes down to that.And, it, essentially kind of restating with Thucydides said about foreign policy, that it’s all about the strong do what they will and, the weak suffer what they must.HEFFERNAN: Yeah, I mean, there’s no, I think, Rorty, Richard Rorty, so my mentors as Rene Gerard was Peter Thiel’s, said that [00:50:00] a liberal, and Rorty was the liberal who uniquely took his own side or say in an argument, right? He believed in actual just liberalism, which has religious tolerance as a key component. But anyway, he said a liberal is a person who thinks just this, the cruelty is the worst thing you can do.So any, anything that ends in cruelty is something that liberals must oppose. So, whatever immigration policy ends in the shooting of a innocent woman in the face the other night is a policy to oppose whatever your theory of immigration or state boundary state borders or nationalism. it doesn’t matter that po there’s something inhumane about that policy and that’s it.We just take it from there. But as you point out, Stephen Miller and, and, and Nietzsche, actually believed that the aversion to cruelty was the worst thing you could do. I think you quote in that, the essay you showed me about Gerard, and we should link it ‘cause it’s really was really interesting, great passages from Nietzsche that you pulled out.But one of them that said, God, I can’t even, he’s just such a terrific diabolically good writer. but something about these men that. Can’t re but respond to suffering in this feminine way by wanting to alleviate it. something like that. I don’t have it. which is like, yeah, there’s something, the terrible weakness in you, if you, if you, shy away from doing cruelty or if you, or, if you want, leave morale to under or soothe suffering.Right, right. I think I, I saw something by a, I saw an interview with a former, border guard, ice border guard, and, she was talking about all the ways that you [00:52:00] license cruelty in yourself. And mostly it’s, I mean on a mass scale, she’s repenting right now, but, they called, I guess the people, coming over the border.She was on the sa at the southern border that she called. They call them tonks ‘cause it’s the sound. Flashlight makes when you hit the person on the head to knock them out, but also call them bodies. So only bodies. And she said she was able with some conditioning to see them as not human. And without being able to see them as not human, she never would’ve been able to, gotten over her impulse to care for them, that she felt like was there.And, we could argue, and I’m not sure it’s worth arguing whether there is a natural instinct to oppose cruelty, but what I like about Rorty is he says, A liberal is a person who thinks the cruelty is the worst thing you can do. So if you, for whatever reason, you do not need to believe in God or Marx or Mao or anything, but if just out in your kind of.I don’t know, just it like in your infinite possibilities of how you can look at the world like the, microorganism that you just brought up, who like sees a thing and thinks, what should you do with it? If you see an act of cruelty like in Minneapolis the other night and you think that’s the worst thing a human can do, then you sort of know what you’re supposed to do politically.You don’t then need to derive any of your beliefs from philosophers of the Enlightenment or anywhere else in your private life. You can believe in all the superstitions you want. You’re totally allowed to think that, or actually find that praying for a parking place gets to your parking place.But it’s not a good basis for policy. In the, public sphere, your beliefs in magic or the Bible or revelation or the fact that we all need to get to Israel for the second coming, that’s not how you [00:54:00] design policy, foreign or otherwise. what you use that your beliefs for are to make your private life beautiful.And what you use your commitments to ending cruelty for is to make your public life humane. and that’s the best I think I can do to summarize Rty. when you get to Gerard and Nietzsche, you get to kind of. Crazy metaphysics that is essentially science fiction, right? Like at the end of Girard’s life.a and Teal at times has talked about, really lunatic, end time stuff. They believe in all kinds of sin and they just believe in well, andSHEFFIELD: They say that liberals are the antichrist. Literally they say,HEFFERNAN: That’s right.SHEFFIELD: It’s what they say.HEFFERNAN: That’s right. Liberals are the antichrist. So they believe that’s right.Yeah, right. So Thiel has been lecturing on the antichrist. So that’s the kind of world building that they ultimately are doing. And one of the things that comes with their world is a willingness, as in many video games and other sci-fi worlds, a willingness to do countenance, cruelty, to do cruelty, to encourage cruelty.and and then you see that in Steven Miller. So just a whole world designed to inverting. Not just the principles of, kind of Christlike Christianity or something that seems a little more jesusy than some of this other weird stuff. And, or, but the enlightenment too, but just standard liberalism.Don’t hit your kids, don’t hit your kids.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.HEFFERNAN: There.SHEFFIELD: Exactly. yeah. And, the, and that’s why it does go back to the, problem of other minds that, other people have the right to their beliefs and they have the right to their thoughts and they have the right to different thoughts than you do.HEFFERNAN: Yes.yes.SHEFFIELD: And that’s, and, that, and going into [00:56:00] psychology, I mean, developmental psychology, there’s just this enormous corpus of literature about both, developmental psychology in terms of, people have to progress through different cognitive abilities.And because everybody in our original earliest states, we’re entirely egocentric. And we, we are not able to perceive, the world and pay attention to it and understand it. And you see that just as simply as that, little, Susie doesn’t want to share her toys with her baby brother, because he doesn’t have a right to toys. Only she does.And that problem unfortunately scales up because a lot of parents don’t impart proper theory of mind into their kids. And then you see it also, this kind of-- so what starts from an egocentric frame of mind also eventually devolves into a fear of other minds.and I think that’s. That is kind of the core of the appeal of a lot of these reactionary, conservatism in that, because it’s like ostensibly they are Christians and supposedly they care about, society having more Christians in it. But so, so if you’re getting immigrants from illegal or otherwise from Latin America or whatever, these people are Christians and in fact, they’re probably more devout, and more Bible reading and believing than most of their American haters are.But it doesn’t matter because they’re not full people, because they’re not, they’re not American, they’re not white, or whatever.HEFFERNAN: Let, okay, first it’s 2 0 4, so I don’t know if we are supposed to meant to keep it to a certain.SHEFFIELD: We don’t have to, butWhy reactionary Catholicism is becoming more popular in the U.S. far rightHEFFERNAN: Okay. If we can, go on for, 10 more minutes or so.I, I [00:58:00] hope this doesn’t bring us too far field, although what field are we in to start with? I, when you talk about the Christianity of many of the people, especially, coming over from South America, it, I think one thing we’ve seen since Trump took office a year ago is, a split among Christians.And that is into see if you agree with me, but I think we’re starting to see a split between Protestants and Catholics assert itself or reassert itself that’s been papered over for a long time and so much that, Martin Luther Kings, I think. Even before he said he imagined had a dream of a world where white and black children would be together.He thought a world where Protestants and Catholics would be together. now we have, I don’t, I still don’t quite understand where Mormons now fit into the scheme. I know they’re not Catholics. but there’s a different word, right. For Mormon church.SHEFFIELD: I mean, people would classify them as generically speaking.HEFFERNAN: Right. Okay. So, but Know it’s Catholics coming over the border. Nick Fuentes is a Catholic, Catholic, Candace Owens is a recent Catholic convert. JD Vance is a Catholic convert. Peter Thiel is, I don’t know if he’s a cradle Catholic, but he certainly became more ardent about it. Like Rene Gerard, who isn’t, was a con, was a, convert.they have, they’re like in Opus Day there are people who think the current pope and the Pope that preceded him are too far to the left. and, so more Catholic than the Pope put it that way. and they, Tucker Carlson is Catholic Curious. He’s an Episcopalian, but he is talked a lot about how he maybe should be a Catholic and they have a very different relationship to Christian Zionism.[01:00:00]And this comes to theology than do Protestants who grew up with it. especially evangelicals who grew up with Christian Zionism. And are not quite sure that there is a Judeo-Christian world, right? They think that the church superseded, the people of Israel or Israel, instead of fulfilled a prophecy or that the Jews have still a chosen place, or that the state of Israel under Netanyahu, fulfills some particular thing.So this is really loud on the right, right now it’s sort of Charlie Kirk, the way that Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes used to show down before Charlie Kirk died. was along some of these lines. and the Catholics in this equation, the reactionary Catholics are much more anti-Semitic. they, they tilt me a Nazi.They’re isolationist, they’re anti-Israel. they are pro-Palestine in ways that like ominously means that some on the left approve periodically of the things they say. a lot of them. So, Marjorie Taylor Greene, was victim of priest abuse, or at least witnessed pre priest abuse when she was a young Catholic.And that influenced her obsession with the Epstein case and Q Anon. the sort of idea of a cabal of pedophiles was, actually something she was familiar with. and and I think all that is informing the conversation even around policy issues like Israel. Oh yeah, like support for Israel, and, yeah, and also how to accept immigrants, because Catholics have a giant empire and they have Catholics everywhere, and they, and Nick Fuentes has a Mexican, mother, a grandmother, and, and so a grandfather.And so, I think there’s a like a little [01:02:00] more hospitality to, to Catholic immigrants also. anyway.SHEFFIELD: Well, and yeah, and actually, yeah, as far as, and even like with regard to race, I think that’s true as well, that, generally speaking. I mean, if you look at the people who show up to Nick Fuentes events, a lot of them are black, a lot of them areHEFFERNAN: Hispanic.SHEFFIELD: Yeah,HEFFERNAN: That’s right. That’s right. It’s, he’s, can be less of a white nationalist. He’s a Christian nationalist, but, he, yeah. And objects to Trump now, just as Candace Owens does along the lines that he’s like a globalist who’s aligned with Jews. I mean, who knows? Although they do believe that there’s some philosophical reason for this, and Catholics and Protestants haven’t always, you paper over those differences long enough and, yeah.. And I think the difference between traditional Zionists and Christian Zionists has also been papered over and is splintering, yeah. Right now in interesting ways. This is all just to talk, get more to talk about the right and also talk about Stephen Miller as I think quite a secular figure.I mean, he, his wife will say any criticism of him is antisemitism, but I think as you point out, it’s straight, it’s doctrinaire, might mix right. Sort of I don’tSHEFFIELD: Nietzschean.HEFFERNAN: Very Nietzschean. Yeah. I guess Nietzschean. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. well, so there, yeah, the Catholic point is one that I, think doesn’t get covered in the media as much as it should because within Catholicism, there has, from its very beginning, been an anti-democratic elitist, tradition and that was something that was regnant within the church up until, roughly Vatican two, just a little bit before that. Probably one of the most influential reactionary documents, that has ever been published is the Syllabus of [01:04:00] Errors. and that was, published, by, Pius, 12th, I think. I’m sorry, I might not get the number wrong, so don’t, crucify me guys.This idea that modernity, is evil and it’s satanic and it has to be stopped. . you know, it, it’s, that is something that they have in common with, far right Protestants, but the far right protestants just do not have any sort of intellectualism, and they don’t have a history.So, so like, one of the fascinating things about, besides the fact that all that science, magic and, religion, were all together. That’s also the case within the artistic, world as well, that, all political traditions were kind of mixing up, for, centuries.And you just really saw that, in a lot of the Christian art and literary traditions that existed. like Michelangelo, you obviously was, anyway, that’s it. That bit far afield.So, but essentially, they right wing anti-modern people have figured out, that Catholicism does have this rich well of monarchists or fascists beliefs that they can draw upon. And so that’s why people like JD Vance have kind of gravitated toward that. I mean, JD Vance is someone, who has always craved stability and obeying authority. that’s what he is done his whole life. He’s not a guy that, wants to think for himself.He wants the thinking to be done for him more powerful people. And so that Catholic tradition does, it has a lot of appeal and that’s why you are seeing a lot of people, go into it. But that trend existed even before the recent influencer trend. Like when you look at the Federalist Society, [01:06:00] or right-wing judges overwhelmingly historically, they came from, they were either Catholics or Jews.They were not evangelical. Because evangelicals, their tradition is against intellectualism. It’s against trying to figure things out and use your . . whereas, at least with reactionary Judaism or Catholicism, they, don’t, they’re not against using your mind and just want it for intolerant purposes.Somatic experience and a politics of determined loveHEFFERNAN: Yeah, I mean, it also should be pointed out that, just as white supremacy and anti-racism or civil rights c grow together, there is also the pope himself, the first American pope who is quite progressive. And, and then the re new interest in liberation theology. It’s really my domain. But, the fact that I’m in New York, we have a democratic socialist, mayor at Democratic socialism was founded in part by Michael Harrington, the great liberation theologian.and, and the, sort of activist wing of it, I think John Fugelsang, whose parents are a former monk and a former nun who fell in love. When both of them had just taken vows of celibacy, and left and married and had John, and now he’s written separate separation of church and hate about the, the fundamentals of ju of Jesus’s radicalism.which is something I think of interest to some Catholics. and, and, and, South America has been a, a, site of kind of some liberatory practices. And so with Venezuela and the news and so on, who knows what will happen. But, and obvi and o OBAs day, he has been like really shunted out of the Vatican and, and, JD Vance is, I mean, it seems like the current pope.Has no trouble [01:08:00] trolling him and subtweeting JD Vance and, otherwise dunking on him. you, he’s pretty explicitly, critical in a, good Chicago, black Hawks way, I dunno. Yeah, Of JD Vance and that, and that, that’s been interesting to see too. But there, there’s life yet in these ancient religions.and, and, I think one of the things I once again get from Rorty is that there is no real strain of Christianity that points you to policy decisions in the present moment. I mean, I don’t know if you saw this, but a Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz and, he, and, this is before.I’m not sure if it was before October 7th or not. It must not have been. But Tucker was asking him with his usual antisemitism, but, so I’ll caveat to that, but asking Ted Cruz why he is such a strong supporter of Israel. And Ted Cruz said, well, somewhere in the Bible it says, he who blesses Israel be blessed and he curses Israel be cursed.And Tucker Crosson says, well, where is that? and Ted Cruz is embarrassed and shuffles around and doesn’t know. And then, tuck Tucker, kind of zings him and tells him where it is, and then, says, well, but is this the Israel in Genesis that’s mentioned in Genesis? Is that the Israel that’s like run by Netanyahu?and it’s Tucker’s show, but you know, Ted Cruz is in the hot seat the whole time and can’t keep it together and can’t make any point. But the kind of overarching, like, why are we down here in the nuts and bolts of what God said to do about Israel? And someone’s point about some one passage in somewhere in some translation of the Bible that no one can remember, and they’re talking about it.And these two are debating, like they’re really important theologians and Ted Cruz has a real education, but we’re not seeing any of it because a passage about being blessed and cursed, which are, what are those things? They have no like correlates in the physical world that is determining Israel [01:10:00] policy, that kind of thing is determining Israel policy.This is a US senator making decisions about whether to further arm, a nation involved in genocide. And what is your grounding for doing that, sir? A passage in the Bible that has unfalsifiable claims about blessing and cursing to do with the word, can’t even remember Israel, that has something to do with something and he can’t even remember it.Yeah. So like that’s where we are. And and that’s what happens when you take religious reasoning and turn it into guns and violence. so that’s why according to Rorty, you don’t purify your religious thinking so that it’s so great that it immediately leads to perfect policy and moral decisions and ethical decisions in your life.‘cause you never will do that. You will not refine Bible stories such that you know exactly how to share your toys or not cheat on your wife. It’s just not going to happen. You do these things happen in different lanes. Politics, your political self is a much, well much simpler, but apparently harder thing that it can, you can be too smart for it.You can’t be too dumb for trying to. Oppose cruelty and prevent cruelty. it’s why things like the video the other night or the images of Gaza, that, Hillary Clinton and what’s her name, Horowitz, would have us never watch because they could cloud our thinking to see videos of Gaza. But those are the things that drive political action.The same thing happened with Vietnam, with images. Just, it’s very simple. When you’re making a good political decision, you just want to be on the side against cruelty. yeah. And, and then in your personal life, you can dream up as many lizard people and private life as you want. and, our tradition in America of religious tolerance of sort of respect and for other minds of, we don’t have a single religion, we don’t have a single language as much as Trump would have.It otherwise [01:12:00] means that, within the confines of your brain and your person and maybe your community. You can have all those beliefs, but one thing does not have to inform the other. And listening to William Penn have a whole idea about how the world should be run, or tamin have a whole idea about how the, lenape, were to live their lives.He was our, he was a leader, right? But just having no interest in telling Penn how to lead his life and vice versa. So what I don’t get is why like Ted Cruz can sit home with his kink about being blessed and cursed and blah, blah, blah, and Israel, and reread the Bible and look things up and pray on his knees and ask for forgiveness and do whatever is little, Christian heart desires, but please don’t go and, please don’t go and continue to vote for a genocide, and then cite the Bible as if that closes the case for anyone but you.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. well, that’s right. And, and, the. and that illustrates, this dichotomy with regard to, blessing Israel or whatnot. that does illustrate kind of the poverty of the evangelical tradition becauseHEFFERNAN: Yeah,SHEFFIELD: what they’ve done is essentially based a vast series of i policies and ideas based on one verse, that, they have taken outta context.so the, context.HEFFERNAN: But let’s say they took it, let’s say they took it in context because Nick Fuentes has talked about this too, and he says, well, no, because that is real, is the, as the sym Jews, and later they are the church, sorry, the church supersedes them or what it’s called, like replacement or something.It’s got the same replacement, whatever.SHEFFIELD: Supersessionism. Yeah,HEFFERNAN: supersessionism and, yeah. Excuse me.SHEFFIELD: I mean, yeah, I mean,HEFFERNAN: yeah, I mean, all of this sounds, even if it was sounds like Lord of the Rings, like I, okay, the orcs took over. They’re no longer the thing of [01:14:00] the S and the whatever. I am fine to listen to them, I guess.No, I’m not. I’m impatient listening to sci-fi. I just don’t care. I don’t care about Ted Cruz’s. I mean, Peter Thiel’s Antichrist or Nick Fuentes says thing. Yeah. They lead to neo-Nazis and they lead to whatever. And it’s toy thinking that way lays the rest of us. And like our good brains that could be like, to this exact point of we have ICE in the streets.So if like you have good strategic ideas about opposing ICE, then that is a very good thing to bring to the table. If you want to talk angels dancing on heads of pins and ENTs and orcs, then you know, there are definitely Reddit boards for that. And I, so in other words, I don’t think that a good biblical scholar, maybe John Fugalsang, or you or, a better reader than all these people should come along and say, well, actually what Jesus wanted was this, and that’s why we should oppose cruelty. or, if you read this carefully, you’ll find out that Israel is or isn’t prophesied as the contemporary state of Israel.all of that analysis is kind of nothing as opposed to, and again, I get this from Rorty, but, one or two photographs or one or two images of the, Renee Good being shot in the face, for making decisions about what to do.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, so I mean, ultimately, cognitive psychology, it does, basically, I’d say there’s a general consensus, not everybody buys it. The, cognition, there’s basically two types of partnership. There’s what I, call the somatic reasoning, which is the reasoning that comes from your body. It’s your instinct, it’s your intuition. And that’s good enough for most, most things in your life, but it is, [01:16:00] egocentric.It’s based on your stuff. But, that’s the thing. It is actually the basis for abstract reason, the other kind, because abstract reasoning always has, and this is the problem with large language models, is that they don’t have a somatic core to, to pull from. and so, but the thing is, so, so your somatic intuition’s about your own experience, nobody can falsify that, like .It’s objectively true that you’ve felt something when you experience something. And so like that’s, that’s the phenomenological basis of all truths. and, so, but the problem is that’s not. That cannot work as a basis for someone else. So in other words, I felt something is not a justification-- somatic experience is not a, it cannot be a source of truth for anyone else.And so we have to be able to think outside of our own body, in order to, and that’s the basis of society is to say that, our personal experience, it is valid from a civil rights perspective. And it means we have civil rights.But basically, what you’re describing, like that’s, that was the basis of the enlightenment also, but, and, Penn’s experience of, doing that fits within that larger project, but we just, we haven’t explained it.So like a lot of people don’t know the history. They don’t, know why this stuff works and why we believe it, and that’s really what it comes down.HEFFERNAN: Well, I mean if you count as somatic experience the evidence of your eyes and ears, right? I think So we’re now talking somatically about the body.So the eyes and ears just take a look at the videos about, of the, of the murder the other night and the other day and, and. Whatever your intuition and sense of it [01:18:00] is probably pretty right. they’re definitely, and by the way, that intuition does not have to be whose fault it was, or, it just that gut feeling that you get from photographs and fiction and and works of art, where you know what to do.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.HEFFERNAN: And the thing to do is to make sure that never happens again.SHEFFIELD: Exactly right.HEFFERNAN: AndSHEFFIELD: yeah. So,HEFFERNAN: and that’ss theSHEFFIELD: truth. Yeah.HEFFERNAN: And everyone who doesn’t want that to happen again, is on our side. They don’t, it doesn’t matter if they, it doesn’t, it truly doesn’t matter what they believe about immigration reform or if they’re socialists or Antifa or right wingers, or never Trumpers or maga.If you look at that and think, that should never happen again, then then I want to be in solidarity.SHEFFIELD: Exactly. And whatever your other beliefs are, we can work it out. That’s it. We believe it.HEFFERNAN: Your other mind is, your mind is your own place. Yeah. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: That’s right. Yeah. So like, ultimately the best way to defeat this fascistic, monarchist impulse is a politics of determined love. Like that’s really what we’re talking about here.HEFFERNAN: Yeah. Rorty says, so told Jurgen Habermas, right before he died, and it’s this like rare, very sincere moment that he just wanted to live in a world where the only law was love.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And yeah. And and we have to do that in our own lives and, promote that as a way of life for everyone else. And we did.HEFFERNAN: We have to end there. there’s no way. Matthew, thank you so much. I always love talking to you.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, this was great. now, do we know how to end the stream? I don’t know. Can you I see X button.HEFFERNAN: I see it. I see an X. I’m going to push it. Thank you so much everyone for joining us.SHEFFIELD: Thank you [01:20:00] everybody. Thank you Virginia! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary  Donald Trump has been on the national political scene for more than 10 years, but in a lot of ways, it seems that America’s top news organizations have yet to figure out how to cover him properly. That’s a serious problem because during his second term, Trump is encountering much less resistance from within the Republican party, and as a result, is breaking domestic and international laws much more frequently and blatantly.In 2015, the national media were not prepared for a politician who lied as easily as he breathed, and who viciously attacked anyone for telling hard truths about him. A year into his second presidential term, they still have not been able to adjust.Despite the many failures of America’s media with regard to Trump, however, it is also the case that in 2025, some journalists, like the Pentagon press corps, showed courage and alacrity in dealing with the bullying and the deception—including from corporate executives eager to show fealty to an administration that loves to deploy government power against independent media.But Trump himself is not the only one assaulting American journalism. It is coming under attack from within thanks to billionaire oligarchs like Larry Ellison and Jeff Bezos who have bought up marquee journalism institutions and corrupted them through paying off Trump’s nuisance lawsuits and hiring Republican spinmeisters like newly installed CBS editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss, who has made a career out of passing off conservative dogma as moderate pragmatism.There’s a lot that happened in 2025 with Trump and the media, and so in this episode I wanted to unpack some of it with Margaret Sullivan, she’s the executive director of the Journalism School at Columbia University, the former public editor of the New York Times, and a former columnist at the Washington Post. She also writes for the Guardian and for her newsletter, American Crisis. Be sure to check out the series she wrote on journalism ethics at Columbia Journalism Review as well.The video of our December 22, 2025 conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content—In his second term, Trump’s lawsuit threats against the media are getting real results—America needs to hear what Republicans think, but that should be through reporting, not platforming lying commentators—Flashback: Far-right media channels were previewing Trump’s radical second term agenda —How reactionary media outlets are radicalizing conservative Christians—Trump and the radical right are utilizing the same disinformation playbook developed by tobacco companies in the 1970s—For nearly a century, Republicans have been pretending to be the ‘real liberals,’ Bari Weiss was only too happy to helpAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction07:12 — What Trump could have done with a Fairness Doctrine12:15 — Bari Weiss and the myth of the moderate conservative TV audience21:22 — Media organizations pushing back on presidents36:03 — Journalism as public philosophy40:38 — Rethinking objectivity in journalism45:16 — Democracy cannot function properly without a public that thinks soundlyAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So it’s been the first year of the second Trump administration and I thought it would be good to do a retrospective of how things were in this first year in the media, from your standpoint and whether you see things changing for the better or for the worse. There’s a lot to talk about, so why don’t we just start overall with what are the main differences in the way that Trump is being covered this first year versus the previous term?MARGARET SULLIVAN: Right. Well, I wish I could say that I saw a dramatic difference in the way he’s being covered in this second time around, but I don’t really think that’s the case. My feeling is that the mainstream press never really learned how to cover him to begin with. And I don’t really see a huge change in that. You have to deal with the fact that he has a lot of lies and misstatements in what he says. But they’re so constant that I don’t think that the mainstream press has sort of ever—there’s fact checking, there’s an effort to say, oh, well, that wasn’t true. But there’s still there’s still a lot of the same stuff that I think beveled the press and the public, [00:04:00] frankly, in his first term.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s right in terms of the coverage. In terms of the owners though—SULLIVAN: Oh, that’s, that is different.Yeah, that is different. I mean, we’re seeing in big media just this really very fast consolidation of ownership that is continuing to progress. So these media conglomerates are getting bigger and and they, and then the decisions, this is particularly true. But not only, but particularly true in the world of, TV news. So, ABC is owned by Disney, CBS is now owned and controlled by Paramount Global, and that too is probably going to grow and get, bigger or different. CNN is in the mix because of because of their ownership and, it kind of. Goes on and on like that. So, I think what happens is that the priorities are less coming from the journalists. Not entirely, I don’t want to overstate it, but certainly there have been decisions that have been made about settling lawsuits. That Trump has has begun that seem pretty clearly to be coming from corporate concerns rather than journalistic values.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. One definitely with ABC, that was the case. And CBS as well. And yeah, the, I think what, a lot of this has shown though is that really, what we, what the media had in terms of, standards and things like that, they were norms. there was no real mechanism by which the public could hold them accountable or the staff could hold them accountable or something, organization professional associations or whatever.These didn’t exist, and [00:06:00] that’s, I think is the kind of biggest thing about the 10 years that we’ve had of Trump on the scene is that norms are nothing. Ultimately they exist only in your mind, they’re enactments, they’re not actual, real things to stop problems.SULLIVAN: No, there’s no, it’s not as if there are media cops out there who are going to say, let’s consult the, society of profession or professional journalist, code of ethics and issue tickets. it’s, and this, as you say, a lot of what’s happened. During both of these Trump administrations is that we found out that people were acting out of norms that had developed for a long time and that the norms have been smashed. And oh, I guess, oh, that can happen and not, and there’s no consequence for it. And maybe the norms weren’t so great anyway, but in some cases they at least sort of, There were some good things about them. So, but we find out that, in a way, this is, again, a little bit overstated or maybe a little falsely stated, but it’s like, it’s like we were all on the honor system and now we find out that’s, oh, there’s no consequences for doing things another way.What Trump could have done with a Fairness DoctrineSHEFFIELD: and there’s an interesting paradox to that topic more generally though, that when we look outside of the United States. Some countries, like the UK for instance, have agencies, government agencies like Ofcom, and these agencies exist in many different nations, that do have regulatory power on media.And I, it, I think a lot of times people have said, well, that would be nice if there was something that could administer accountability. But gosh, can you imagine what Donald Trump would have done with an Ofcom under his control?SULLIVAN: I mean, i’m always very nervous about the idea of the government, whatever, government having, direct regulatory or funding power [00:08:00] over the press. So, I mean with, the funding piece of it, I, think about this in terms of the demise of local news, which has really, continued at a really fast downward pace. And people say, oh, well, certainly you wouldn’t want to see direct funding of news organizations. And there was a long time in my many decade career where I’ve said definitely not. and now I am like, well, I don’t know. Would it mean the difference between keeping. Some local newspapers coming operational or not.And maybe in some cases if there could be some guardrails built in, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. But, and people always, the public likes to remind me that there once was a thing called the fairness doctrine, which had some which had some power over, kind of. Kinds of issues for, broadcast news and that, went away long time ago.And people, I think it’s more that they like the idea of it. I’m not sure they would really like the reality of it too much, but.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I think that’s right. And when you look at Brendan Carr, FCC i, it’s obvious that this would be something that, that, Trump and his cronies would a hundred percent abuse in ways that would be appalling to even the most ardentSULLIVAN: Yeah, I think that’s right. Yeah, that’s true.SHEFFIELD: The other thing also is and of course this is, I can say this as a former member of the liberal bias industry is that, the, Trump administrations, especially in the second one here, is this is the apotheosis of the liberal media bias complex. Since Reed Irvine and Richard Nixon in the seventies had spent basically 50 years completely undermining and attacking the, national press and saying that it was [00:10:00] hopelessly, permanently irrevocably biased and must be de-legitimized.Trump is, this is the fulfillment of that Nixon project. And in a way that I think a lot of people, that’s not something that I think, has been remarked upon enough.SULLIVAN: Right, Right, And I think another thing that came out of that era was, the birth of Fox News. You know that, oh, we can’t kind of Roger Ailes, Nixon, the idea that we can never let this happen again. We can never let a Republican president be drummed out of office again. this is the, thinking on it.I’m not saying I subscribe to this, but so we need to have our own media and now, and then, Fox is born. I think 1996. And, we see what a profound impact it has had. And then of course, everything that’s kind of cropped up around that. But Fox itself is still, powerful in its own way, influential. Influential, I guess I’ll say.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, it’s, yeah, it still remains the biggest node in the right wing mediaSULLIVAN: Right, right, right. sure.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I mean it, and that, that, project that you, that we’re talking about here, it is. I mean, they, literally did Roger Ailes and other people wrote a memo for Nixon, to, create television news Incorporated which launched as a proto, CNN, actually, that’s actually where CNN came from. I just a, I don’t, I’ll link to I think it was Gabriel Sherman that wrote, about that with regard to Roger Hales in that end. That’s it’s a little bit of history that’s, it like, I, and it’s, it, created satellite television in, in a large way for news integrated in, into a that way.SULLIVAN: That Was a time too, when basically social media didn’t exist. And so we really are living in a very, different world [00:12:00] now in the world of podcasters. She said, well, on a podcast and, very powerful media figures who aren’t traditional journalists, but rather, influential voices, whether we like them or not, they’re very influential.Bari Weiss and the myth of the moderate conservative TV audienceSHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and one to that to that point, one of the other. Kind of dynamics of the first year of Trump from the corporate standpoint is that it does seem like, especially when we look over at Skydance and Paramount and the installation of Bari Weiss at CBS News that there seems to be this thought that there’s just this massive audience out there of, of right wing voters who want a staid broadcast news that it has more Republican talking points in it. And I don’t think thatSULLIVAN: Right. Right, I mean, I guess I would tweak what you said a little bit. I think the thinking is that there’s this that there’s this huge demand for some sort of center-right kind of mostly centrist, but also kind of right-leaning like the, Scott Jennings, Scott Jennings, who as your listeners probably know is, on CNN for the most part.And, is a defender of Trump’s, and, has been recruited as I understand it, by Bari Weiss at CBS as he’s oh yeah, if we could only have more of that. And I agree with you, Matthew, that I, don’t think there’s a huge demand for that. CNN tried a version of that a year or two, I can’t remember now, a couple years ago where they tried to go very, very sort of center, right?I think and, it wasn’t successful. In fact, it failed pretty badly. So, I mean, CNN always [00:14:00] struggles, so who knows? Who knows what, what can work there. But yeah, the, this sort of thinking that, yeah, the Bari, that Bari Weiss is the answer because she’s anti woke and she won’t be like the rest of these liberal media, people. And in fact, she’s, that is turning out to be the case. But whether it’s a successful formula, I have my doubts, especially when you. Do things that alienate your newsroom pretty badly, like she’s doing.We’re recording this. The day after we find out that Bari quite unilaterally has with, held back an already reported, already vetted, already lawyered piece. On 60 Minutes about these El Salvador prison that would make the Trump administration, attempts to hold them to account and they tried very hard to get comment from different heads of agencies and departments and so on and, probably from the White House and, this happens. You don’t get comment. Well, you, run the piece anyway, and you say they wouldn’t comment. But what she’s saying is, no, we’re not going to run it because it’s lacking in that comment and it needs more reporting. Well, the, that reporting piece of it has already been done. And when you have. When you have a staff like you have at 60 Minutes, that’s very experienced. They, don’t like that. And I think that, you don’t really want to lose your newsroom, which I would imagine she’s in the process of doing just that right now. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and a lot of them have already quit. And I have to imagine that, people are, looking, are the people who are still there are, looking for the exit and trying to find a place to land. I have no doubt about that. Now with, yeah, with regard to her though, one of the other initiatives that she has put into place which will be launching in 2026 is a, debate series, which [00:16:00] seems to be trying to recapitulate the, the debates of a b, c news filed in the, 1960s with or I think it was, or was it the seventies? I forget the, whatever that was with William F. Buckley Jr. And Gore Vidal.I think that’s what they’re trying to do, because I mean, for ABC they were the, and also ran at that time, they were new network. And they use them to get more ratings. So I think that’s what she’s trying to do.But the problem is she doesn’t know how to have debates and she doesn’t have relationships with people who can actually have a meaningful debate. so she’s booked basically a bunch of Alan Combs, liberals.Or, people who are conservatives like stephen Pinker to represent the left. And it’s like, well, this is not, this is a Potemkin debate. and, the topics that she wants people to debate are tired and boring. And one of them being, has feminism failed women? Well, the fact that a a woman is allowed to be the editor in chief of CBS News and also one who is not straight that would seem to be kind of a, an indicatorSULLIVAN: Yeah. And also one who’s never, and also one who’s never been a journalist. How about that? Add, that into the list of qualifications. Certainly, and certainly, anyway yeah, I mean, it, it doesn’t seem like a super compelling topic to me.But and also she, had this vaunted town hall interview with Erika Kirk, which, from what I’ve read, the ratings were poor. Not that everything should be about ratings, but I don’t think it sort of caught the public imagination in the way that might have been hoped.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, I think the reason for that being that the people who like Erika Kirk do not like CBS News, they’re not going to watch it. And then the people who [00:18:00] are watching CBS News.SULLIVAN: Right, right. And I think that’s, and I think that is a, actually a lot of what happened. A version of that happened at CNN during that period we were talking about, which is who’s your audience here and who do you think your audience is? Because I’m not sure there is one.So I mean, there’s something, there’s, to me, there is something appealing, of course, about trying to. Get an audience and a readership or, people, citizens, if you will, who don’t necessarily agree with you or may have very different takes on things. I mean, I think that’s good, that’s what AmErikan democracy is supposed to be about.But this version of it that’s kind of, it’s seeking an audience that is in somebody’s fantasy world and turns out not to really, it’s what you said. The, fans of Erika Kirk don’t like CBS. The people who are traditional CBS watchers don’t, don’t like Erika Kirk. So you’re kind of. You’re kind of missing them both there, I think.And, it’s, we, experimentation is fine and great but I think you have to know a little bit about what you’re trying to do. And so far it doesn’t seem like that’s happening at CBS News.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and as somebody who was, in, in a past life, in, coming from a more mainstream, moderate, conservative viewpoint which I’ve since changed from I, I can appreciate what she’s trying to do, although she doesn’t want to admit that’s what she’s trying to do. I think that’s part of the problem is that she tells people that she’s a liberal when basically there’s no position that she has that’s liberal other than that she supports seems to support abortion rights and seems to support lesbian and gay marriage.But that’s, those are positions [00:20:00] that lots of Republicans have in fact. And we can see that obviously with these abortion referendum, they all, they pass everywhere, they’re, allowed to be on the ballot.SULLIVAN: Yeah, there those are, that’s become sort of mainstream thought, so it’s not really liberal. So Yeah. it’s, it’s a weird, it’s, it’s interesting to watch it play out. I don’t think it’s, it know, it’s sort, of disturbing, but it’s, and just to, so sort of see the, As you mentioned, the settling CBS settling that lawsuit that Trump filed over 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris LA last fall before the election, which, was pretty standard editing. From everything I know.And so, to sort of say, oh, this was edited to make her look good. And then for CBS to say, here’s whatever they said, $16 million for your presidential library. I mean, I’m, I don’t, I’m not a hundred percent sure of those numbers, but you know, they settled it.What they didn’t do was say, this was standard editing and we’re going to defend ourselves. So then when that happens. When ABC does what it did, which was also subtle it gets much harder for the next media organization to stand its ground.Media organizations pushing back on presidentsSHEFFIELD: It does. But I do, we do have to give some credit to the, New York Times and CNN for resisting Trump lawsuits against them in that regard.SULLIVAN: Yeah, no ab absolutely, and I would say even more, well, as much as that the Associated Press, which, because the Associated Press has a global audience. It’s not just people within the boundaries of the United States. When this thing came up about, oh, we’re now going to call this body of water. The Gulf of AmErika, something that had been called the Gulf of Mexico for many, years, and to people around the world, it is known as the Gulf of [00:22:00] Mexico. the AP said, well, no, we’re not going to change our style book because of a, what appeared to be a whim. And then Trump. Punished them by keeping them off of Air Force one and keeping ’em out of briefings and stuff like that. And so the, AP has sued and they, it’s still happening.This, they sued, they won one round. There was an appeal. They lost a round. So, but they have not just sort of said, oh, okay. And then I think the other thing, Matthew, that we saw was all these, almost every news organization walking away when. Pete Pentagon said, you basically in essence said if you want a press pass, if you want credentials to enter this building and come to briefings, you need to only publish what we say is okay. And really hardly anyone would agree to do that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, absolutely. And that was a, definite, bright spot for sure. but it does also contrast with the White House Press Corps, I think in a bad way for the White HouseSULLIVAN: You mean Because it, it suggested some solidarity, which we don’t see from the White House. Yeah. You’ll, get a, like a strongly worded letter, but, But you know, when, the president, points to a reporter and tell, orders her to be quiet and calls her piggy, there’s basically very little reaction in the moment at least.It’s just kind like, we’re just here to do our job and we’re, and some of that is about competition. Some of that is about fear of losing access. So I would like to see that improve.And what I mean by improve is I’d like to see some collective [00:24:00] action there, even if it’s, honestly, even if it’s just the next person up saying I or several people saying, I’d like to repeat the question that I can’t remember her name at the moment from Bloomberg News said, becauseTo point it out and say, I don’t think it’s acceptable because it’s really not acceptable.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and I, think it’s worth looking back to the Obama presidency because there was, they, there was solidarity against something that Obama did that his White House was they were contemplating, or I think they did at one point talk about. Banning Fox News from briefings because of its obvious partisanship.And that was pushed back even by CNN and all the, television networks said, no, you can’t do that. And and look, I’m not a fan of Fox. I, they lie pretty much all the time. And but they still are a part of this country. Like it or not. And they have a right to, to be there as a, as an organization that is professional and that does produce, yeah. New shaped contentSULLIVAN: Yeah, no, I think that was good to see during the Obama administration. And they backed off very fast and, which, obviously these are two very different administrations, but it does suggest that some kind of collective action and pressure might have an effect, but we don’t know because we’re not seeing that. So that’s, unfortunate.SHEFFIELD: It is. Well, and this is really a, classic case of the tragedy of the commons in a lot of they’re not they’re not used to an administration, but so constantly and blatantly, viciously attacks their profession and, their content and their, the things that they make. And so they just think, [00:26:00] well, if I don’t, they don’t say anything, then it will go away, or that everything will blow over.SULLIVAN: Some Some of this I really think is competition and, journalists are always been competitive. It’s not, it’s, it doesn’t tend to be a kind of all that much sticking up for each other. It tends to be quite competitive and as I said before, nobody wants to lose access.And meanwhile, your bosses are probably like, just stay in the room and so we can put your question on the air later and show that we’ve got someone in the briefing room. I mean, that’s the motivation more than sort of press rights writ large.SHEFFIELD: Well, and it’s, and it’s an antiquated. Idea, I think because, I mean, nobody, the audience, they don’t give a shit. If you have somebody in the room there or not, they do not care. They just want to know, do you have news that is interesting to me? And important. That’s what they want to know.they don’t care if you’re in the room. They don’t care if you get on camera with a question. It doesn’t matter to them. They don’t even know who your journalists are for that matter. So you’re not accomplishing anything. But this is just this very antiquated mentality from. going back to the idea of, when televised news briefings were novel, so it was a, a status point to have your correspondent on camera and everybody knows, oh, so and so from X, Y, Z asked this question.But those, incentives do not exist anymore forSULLIVAN: not as, Certainly not as much. I mean, I do see, for example I mean, everybody likes to make fun of the evening news broadcast that they don’t matter anymore, but actually they have pretty big viewership,SHEFFIELD: Still bigger than any cable news show. Yeah.SULLIVAN: Exactly.SHEFFIELD: show.SULLIVAN: It’s like if you look at them collectively, the three of them, the three, big ones, it’s like, I think it’s something like 20 million people a night, or it [00:28:00] was, and ABC will say now, and I, I don’t know whether viewers care about this, but I do see it, here’s Mary Bruce, she’s there, and we’re going to hear, they don’t say it just this way, but we’re going to hear her question to the president right now.And I think there’s some sort of pride of, pride of place there. Whether that is meaningful to the public, I don’t know. But then again, ABC is the leader on, among those three. So maybe there’s some effect on,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, the, there’s definitely a, solidarity problem. And I guess one of the other stories of 2025 that kind of did illustrate that also, or that came out in 2025 was the absurd saga of. The reporter, Olivia Nzi and her basically some sort of affair involvement with Robert f. Kennedy Jr. And seemingly actively working to protect him from, damaging news or to get ahead of it and giving him a strategic advice. I mean, this is, i, we haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. time Seems like.SULLIVAN: No, I mean, I have been, the whole time that was happening and coming out and developments were coming out, I was teaching an ethics course, a journalism ethics course at Columbia University. And, we, would, it was like it became this like ripped from the headline class because it was, one week we seemed to be talking about the coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein files and, or, what was coming out in the early releases of those emails. The next week we were talking about Olivia and Noie and we, former fiance Ryan Lizza, who was writing on Substack all the time.I mean, it was. It was pretty wild. And, I would say to my students who are graduate students in journalism, one of my mantras throughout the course was [00:30:00] like, there’s a, in the, in journalism ethics, there can be a lot of, there can be a lot of gray areas. Not everything is cut and dried, but I was, when, the Olivia Nzi thing came along, I was like, no, th this actually is something you should never ever do. Th I can tell you that this one is black and white. Don’t do that.SHEFFIELD: good. You, could have just put her picture up on the wall and say, okay, that’s it. Just follow this story. Don’t do this stuff. do this.don’t,SULLIVAN: don’tdo this. So, but, I mean, it’s it’s been a, soap opera for sure. And it’s also something that regrettably, I think if you already hate the press and you don’t. Bring a ton of nuance to it. You’re like, see, what they do. And That’sSHEFFIELD: yeah, and that’s, an, important point because, actually, I, recently rewatched the, the, film Broken Glass about Stephen Glass. And, it was really notable to me when I was looking at the production credits as they flash on the screen, how many huge. Movie stars had financed this film.Because, I think that a lot of the public, and thanks to Trump and Nixon and all these other people and have, they really do want, the public to think that all journalists are unethical, all journalists are liars. All journalists are trying to manipulate you. And so, this, the, news, E story and, glass, this is exactly what these people have wanted and it, really propels their narrative so so far.SULLIVAN: I mean, the thing is that, journalists do mess up and news organizations do mess up, and then when they kind of come clean or are forced to come clean and talk about it, when they, for example, have a public editor [00:32:00] or when they have to give back a Pulitzer Prize or any of that stuff, it actually seems to, even though you know the transparency and the. And the fessing up is necessary and the corrections are necessary. They actually also add to the problem of people’s mistrust, which is at a low. Very trust is at a very low level anyway, so it, all kind of makes it worse and it’s difficult to know how the press recovers from that because it’s been going on, as we’ve been talking about it, it’s been going on for decades.And I think Trump has really because he’s been so constant about it. About fake news. Charging mainstream reporters with being fake news and talking about what a terrible reporter this person is or you’re a loser and all that sort of thing. And even though a lot of people don’t like that and they think he’s being rude, I think his message still resonates toSHEFFIELD: It, it does. Yeah. And, you as a former public editor have some credibility to talk about that topic in particular.And, but, we, those positions have basically entirely, mostly been eliminated. Although, ironically now CBS News has one, and he’s a Republican donor donor.and activist, so.SULLIVAN: Yeah. I mean, that’s not exactly, I don’t think. I don’t think that’s a true ombudsman or public editor. I mean, usually if you want to do it right, and I think I was the public editor of the Times, and I, think I, I think it was a good position to have. You, know what you want. There is a veteran editor or reporter, someone who is a journalist who kind of knows how this stuff works and is not. As you said, and not an activist, not clearly political and not chosen to have a particular point of view.I mean, when I did the job, I was trying to just reflect what the [00:34:00] readers of the New York Times were saying to me. I wasn’t kind of trying to bring my own politics into it, but rather to say, Hey, I’m hearing from a lot of readers and they’re upset about this story, so how about it, Dean Beke, what, went on here and what is the reason this story was reported this way?And then, I would kind of be able to report it back out to the readers and to synthesize it and draw some conclusions myself. But it wasn’t like it I think the CBS one is it, that’s not an ombudsman in the traditionalSHEFFIELD: Yeah. no. I, don’t think so. Well, and, but these, dynamics of organizations that issue corrections and fess up to mistakes and ethical breaches the, paradox as you, noted, is that when you tell the truth about your mistakes and your fallibility, it makes. Captious critics more likely to say, see, they’re all this way. And they themselves do not ever admit mistakes. They do not admit lies. They do not admit ethical breaches and, and, that’s not something that they’re fan base ever. They, never are able to draw that juxtaposition in thathypocrisy.SULLIVAN: right. I mean, what I have said a lot is that you can. That a bare minimum for judging whether a news organization is credible. And a reasonably good source of news is do they have a corrections policy and is it, can you find it somewhere and do they follow it and do they run corrections? If not, then whatever mistakes they make or whatever falsehoods they put out there, whatever they’re doing, it’s just onto the next thing. And so, I think that’s a litmus test. But in order to, get that idea across to the public, we would have to have like mandatory [00:36:00] news literacy taught in schools. And I don’t see, I mean, I’d be afraid right now of what that would look like.Journalism as public philosophySHEFFIELD: Yeah, if Trump’s around the class. Yeah.Well, all, of this does point to the. A larger dynamic, which I think a lot of journalists and editors and producers, they don’t want to think about, which is that journalism is public philosophy actually. If it’s going to be any sort of approximation to reality and not just peer advocacy if you’re doing reporting, what you are do, you are in the epistemology business, whether you realize it or not.SULLIVAN: Yeah, I mean, we’re trying to determine what’s true. We’re trying to seek. Publish the truth and, the truth as close as we can get it. you in, when you’re on deadline and there’s a developing story, you, at least want to stay close to the facts and then try to, try to get as close as possible to truthful information that you’re sharing with the public.And it’s not just, I mean, it isn’t just that, it isn’t just, here’s a bunch of facts. But it’s also what stories do we choose to do? How are we framing these stories? What’s the headline? What’s the photograph? What investigations have we decided to put a year and a half into? So when people say, I don’t know why these places can’t just tell me the facts and get outta the way.I understand why people say that, but I also know, because I’ve been in the business for a long time and have run a newsroom that. You’re constantly making choices. And that’s a part of it. And that the purpose, one of the main purposes of journalism is to hold powerful people and institutions to account to the public, so [00:38:00] again, I think this stuff is kind of, is not really well mis well understood. Matthew, when I, was at the Washington Post as their media columnist for a while, and while I was there, it came to my attention that there were a number of people who, when they saw a source and a story that was given an anonymity, so they weren’t named they actually thought that those sources were also anonymous to the reporter.SHEFFIELD: Oh, yikes.SULLIVAN: A phonecall, like, Hey, here’s a hot scoop. And when in fact, places like The Post and the Times and many cnn, there’s like a whole process for using an anonymous source and the reporter and probably at least one editor absolutely knows who that person is. And it’s a decision to, are you going to let them, speak anonymously?I think it’s overused. It’s not just because somebody called you up and gave you some supposedSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Wow. I did, I, didn’tSULLIVAN: kind of goesSHEFFIELD: thought that, yikes.SULLIVAN: yeah. It’s, it, I thought it was amazing, but, and I would hear it from time to time, not, there obviously are more sophisticated readers and, listeners and viewers done that too.But some people think that, and, we don’t do a great job of explaining ourselves to people. And that’s part of the trust problem.SHEFFIELD: It is. Yeah. and, ultimately, I mean, really what the, fundamental questions of journalism are, what is truth? How can we know truth? What in this instance is true and what is meaningful? And these are all philosophical questions that have been being shuffledSULLIVAN: I mean, I never know.SHEFFIELD: of years.SULLIVAN: Yes I agree, but I also don’t think that journalists tend to spend a lot of time thinking that way. Maybe they should, but I do think that most journalists are, pretty interested. They, they want to [00:40:00] get it right. They really do. And so that speaks to your idea about, truthfulness or not.But then, you have politicians who lie and what are you going to do about that? When, maybe one of the politicians who lies a lot is the president, what are you going to do about that? Are you not going to quote him? Are you not going to put his lie into a headline? What about if he wants to give an address to the public across the broadcast airwaves?You’re going to take it live and just let it all spew out there. I mean, these are all decisions that have to be made. And there, there’s no rule book really.Rethinking objectivity in journalismSHEFFIELD: No there isn’t. Well, and, that does, circle to the question of objectivity, which is something that you recently wrote about under the headline. Is objectivity still worth pursuing?So first of all, what I mean is, and you, quote the philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has is very relevant in the context of machine learning and AI as well. Now but in this context, you talk about the, view from nowhere whether that caneven exist and itSULLIVAN: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a change. There’s a change in the way we talk about objectivity. But there it’s, if by objectivity you mean I enter a story, I’m a reporter, I enter reporting this story with an open mind, and I am looking for evidence that I’m going to then present to the public. If that’s objectivity, I think that’s great, but often what ends up being. Called objectivity or seen as objectivity is just well, we’re going to take, we’ve got two opposing points of view and we’re going to present them as equal. And people call this, both, sides. Both sides and things, which means like, well, there’s, no such thing as climate [00:42:00] change. And a group of people who say, no, actually climate change is a big crisis. And like if we were to present those in a story as kind of equal that’s, and if we were to present them as equal, I don’t think that should be called objectivity. It should be called laziness. Because you’re not actually trying to bring anything to it except sort of st this person says this and this person says that.So, if that’s object, if that idea is objectivity, then I think it’s out of date.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.SULLIVAN: Maybe it had a place once. But if objectivity is, the idea of entering a story with an open mind and looking for evidence based. Facts that you can make into, what you’re referring to as, truth?Well, that’s a different matter. So it’s, sort of how youSHEFFIELD: yeah, it is. Well, and, then there is also the question of who you is. And I think that’s been probably one of the biggest ongoing problems of the national press in the united States, is that it tends to overwhelmingly be the same editors who have worked there for decades, and they hired the, their, alumni from the university they went to, or they hired their friends, or they solicit op, op-eds from their friends.Like there isn’t and so basically what it’s done is it’s created this insular community, which sometimes people call the village, quote unquote if you remember that and like there’s this, and it is insular and it’s, not only not able to see certain stories but also it’s, excludes most of the public from the conversation. conversation.SULLIVAN: Yeah. And then I think then there has been. This effort to have what’s been known as diverse voices. And [00:44:00] particularly in the wake of the George Floyd murder in 2020, there, there was sort of this reckoning in newsrooms about, well, we see things from this old school point of view and we need to look at it differently. And that had its moment, but I think that moment has. Passed quite.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It has, and I mean, ultimately. I think what has to be done is that people have to, they have to figure out how to bring, bring in new, voices, but maybe not necessarily directly. In other words, you can say these are things that people are talking about. Because a lot of times they might be somebody who’s not used to being interviewed, they have no idea how to do it.So if you interview them, they’re going to be embarrassed or, and, or they won’t want to do it. So, but they’re, but what they’re saying is still important and it still matters. and then also just the idea to, as, you said earlier, that the media business has to educate the public about what this is, what you’re doing.Because ultimately any concept concepts don’t exist in some platonic realm. Concepts are actions. They’re what you are doing. They’re not what you think, and even the act of thought is what you’re doing. IThe challenge of democracy requiring a sound-thinking publicSULLIVAN: Yeah, and I mean, not to get too wonky about this, but there are organizations out there that are trying to do that thing of teaching people how to compare and contrast how to judge whether a news organization is legit or not, or. And I’ll just mention the name of one that I’m familiar with, the news literacy project, and it’s like gone into like, it’s, reached millions of people, but it hasn’t reached even more millions of people, to sort of say oh, and I’m sure you do this too, you see something circulating on social media and you sort of go, really, I wonder about that. And then often. What I do at [00:46:00] least is I start to kind of search around and see is this the only place that’s reporting this and is this place that’s reporting it credible? does it have a history of credibility? Does it correct its errors? We could put the litmus test in there. But there’s a sort of a, learned way to not just go, oh, wow, that’s really interesting. Let me share it, and therefore spreading it all over the world. Which we’ve seen an awful lot of. So yeah, I think we need some, help in thatSHEFFIELD: do. yeah, and, and, one thing on that end, so I is that within, so within, political science and, cognitive psychology, there’s a pretty large volume of studies now over the decades that have noted that people who have more, let’s say intuitionist or somatic ways of thinking compared to abstract reasoning that they, drift toward right leaning parties.So that the paradox of, what I’m of Bari Weiss at CBS and some of these other initiatives is they, something like that should exist. But it has to be educating conservatively inclined, or, somatically inclined people about abstract reasoning and why it’s good.and I don’t think that’s what she’s going to want to do. but like, yeah, the conservative assent to democracy is one of the, core ways that it can exist. Because it’s not for somebody who thinks that their own personal feelings about God or the Bible or whatever, that they are the absolute truth. If you think that, then you’re not well suited to participate in ademocratic republic.SULLIVAN: No, that’s true. It’s true. I mean, people ask me all the time, how can the reality based press, people who [00:48:00] basically deal in facts and, not just share a bunch of lies. how can the reality based press. Get through to the crowd that is so willing to accept a conspiracy theory or declare that an election was rigged or so on.And I mean, I wish I knew the answer to that. I, really don’t, I don’t think it’s by putting Scott Jennings on the air, I, don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s about the things that we’ve seen. And I, I wish I knew the answer to that. I, really don’t. But I think it’s important because because that, as you just said, if we’re going to have a democracy, which is questionable, honestly you need to have an informed electorate.And that what they need to be informed of is actual facts edging right up to the truth. Hopefully it’s even the truth at some, level. So, I think there’s some real problems.SHEFFIELD: There are yeah. Well, and that’s why people like you are out there, Margaret to elevate these issues that the, you don’t have to offer a solution, but we, have toSULLIVAN: Yeah, we can. We can at least excavate the problem, so, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so, for people who want to keep in touch with you, Margaret, why, don’t you give some advice?SULLIVAN: I mean, I, have a Substack called American Crisis and it does not have a paywall, so, I mean. I ask people for money, but you don’t have to give me money. I took the paywall down. So that’s one way. And I also write for the Guardian’s American outlet called the Guardian US. And those are the major places that, that I’m publishing these days. SHEFFIELD: Okay, cool. And yeah. Great. And we’ll have a link to your series in the show notes.SULLIVAN: Oh, that’d be great. Yeah, the series, I’ll just say real quick, was about sort of a new, of trying to take a, does [00:50:00] traditional journalism ethics need a fresh look? And it was published in Columbia Journalism Review. So in several parts. So, if people are interested in that it’d be great if you gave ’em a link. I’d appreciate it.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Cool. All right. WellSULLIVAN: Sure, thanks Okay, Matthew.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Flux Community where we have the video, audio, and transcript of this show, and also a lot of other articles and podcasts about politics, technology, media, and religion, and how they all intersect and create our culture. And if you want to stay in touch, you can do so on Substack at flux.community, or you can subscribe on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux.Thanks a lot for your support. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please do click like and subscribe. Alright, I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary  It’s a new year and while so much is going wrong in the country and the world right now, there are actually some signs of hope. President Donald Trump’s abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro could certainly be the beginning of a period of prolong violence in that country, but the fact that Trump is engaging in foreign policy adventurism is actually proof of his political insecurity here at home. Trump’s weakness is easy to see: Democratic candidates vastly over-performed polls last November. Trump’s approval ratings in general and on the economy are near record lows. The administration’s cover-up of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes has deeply conflicted many of his supporters. Congressional Republicans just scheduled their first-ever votes to override Trump vetoes.Of course, we have no idea what else 2026 will bring, but a big part of ensuring better outcomes is envisioning how they can be made. And in that regard, the new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, is very much worth discussing. In the first place, his policy positions are much more in line with Americans’ desire for massive social changes. But it’s not just the policy. As a candidate, Mamdani is a great example of a Democrat who has adapted to the current media and political environment, and he was someone willing to put in the grueling work of rallies and on-the-ground campaigning—just like Trump was in 2024.Talking about all of this with me today is Elizabeth Spiers, she’s a contributing writer at the New York Times, a podcaster at Slate, and a former editor of the New York Observer.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content* MAGA and Trump are much less popular after his first year back in the White House, can Democrats seal the deal with the public?* By failing to challenge Trump on immigration, Democrats are ceding the critical issue of American identity* The civic institutions and cultural pillars of our country must be strengthened* Since Democrats are hiding their 2024 autopsy, here’s ours* As Republicans have radicalized, Democrats have become more passive—and less successful electorally* Why Democratic establishment consultants aren’t doing political science* Flashback: Trump’s big 2024 bet on low-engagement AmericansAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:16 — Trump is stuck in the 80s, Democrats are stuck in the 90s14:03 — How voters actually make decisions22:47 — Democgraphic identities and economic issues are linked28:03 — Trump’s appeal across demographics32:23 — Democrats playing defense on trans issues38:20 — Trump and Mamdani put in the personal ground work that their rivals did not52:50 — Curtis Sliwa as an example of a Republican who likes an anti-oligarch message and agenda01:02:13 — Democrats have to aim for gigantic majorities, not just ‘wins above replacement’Audio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: We were just talking before our recording here, that in a lot of ways it’s like Donald Trump is stuck in the 1980s and Democrats are stuck in the 1990s.ELIZABETH SPIERS: Yeah, I believe that, I think with Trump, you know how when people peak in high school, they can’t really think about anything else except through the lens of that, that was sort of their high moment and they want to go back there? That’s Donald Trump. B ecause in late eighties, 80, 88, 89 in particular, was kind of his peak in New York society—which is still a place that he wants to be on top of and has always kind of rejected him, but they probably rejected him the least during the late eighties. [00:04:00]And so I think he has done everything in his power to try to be accepted by New York elites. And it’s just never worked for him for a variety of reasons. But you see it in kind of the way that he makes decisions now, the way he views the world. The stuff that’s going on in Venezuela right now, I think.I was joking with somebody yesterday that part of it was that he wanted his own Manuel Noriega and that Maduro wasn’t cooperative, so he just went in and abducted him. But the more I think about it, the more I think that’s actually part of it. He, he has this sort of memory of US activities in Latin America and cooperating with, dictators and using them as assets and then it, when they, when they start to be uncooperative, just arresting them and charging them with drug trafficking.And but it’s, you see it more in his sort of day-to-day, his aesthetic the things that he talks about, the things that he values. And, and I think he, he would happily doom all of us living in 1988 if he could snap his fingers and do it.SHEFFIELD: Oh yeah. And I mean, hell, he is trying to bring back the Star Wars program of Ronald Reagan.SPIERS: Yeah, it’s amazing. I feel like he read a kid’s book about Reagan and took the top lines and said, well, alright, I’m just going to take all of the Reaganism that I think conservatives during that period liked and then replicate them without actually understanding anything about them. He sort of like took the slogan, make America Great Again. He has a very superficial understanding of both history and Reaganism.SHEFFIELD: Well, he does, and, and even with regard to Russia as well, because like if you’re kind of dumb and you look at eighties history You it’s easy to see, wow. He was doing all these deals with the Russians and cooperating with them, and helping them build a better country and make our country safer by making deals with them. Like even though it was the opposite of what Reagan’s intentions were.SPIERS: Well, he [00:06:00] thinks that all of foreign policy, in fact all of his job is really, analogous to being in business. And so, another thing I used to work in finance and one of the things that I, I sort of observed then was that there were so many Wall Street people who saw the movie, wall Street did not understand it as a satire.They thought of it as a playbook. And Gordon Gecko as a kind of hero. And that is precisely the kind of person that Donald Trump admires. And, these strongmen that he sucks up to are, are sort of gecko types. I mean, that, that describes Putin perfectly. And he admires them. So it’s hard for him to sort of wrap his head around the idea that, the Cold War happened for a reason.Democrats stuck in the 1990sSPIERS: He thinks it was all just a big misunderstanding that we can just talk past and he’d rather be friends with the Gecko figure than, and, and, and any kind of antagonism.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then on the democratic side of the aisle looks like the powers that be continue to be stuck in a time warp in that regard. Just one decadeSPIERS: yeah, so my theory about that is that a lot of the people who still retain a lot of influence and power are people who came out of these campaigns in the nineties, where this sort of centrist model that had some libertarian characteristics that wasn’t as hostile to neoliberalism was electorally successful.That was a long time ago. Every time I see James CarVal being trotted out on a stage to explain what Democrats should be doing, now I want to slip my wrist because I, I don’t think that that model is relevant to the electorate we have now, or the times or, or anything that we’re dealing with. But when you have these entrenched.An entrenched class of people who are responsible for determining how Democrats talk to their voters. And they still consist of mostly those people. We do have a gerontocracy problem. We end up with that kind of rhetoric and I, I, I think it’s just very out of touch with where [00:08:00] people are now.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is. And here’s, here’s another further irony about this viewpoint though, is that given the state of the economy in 1992 and the, the, the long lag between the, because, there were like GDP numbers had actually recovered by the election of 92, but, had not, and there were a bunch of other things that had not so.This was effectively an election in which, and then you had Ross Perot, coming in, siphoning away a lot of the people who might not have liked the Republican abortion policies or things like that. because he was pro choice. And so basically it’s almost like I have to say that I think almost any Democrat who ran a reasonably competent campaign would’ve won in 1992.And it had almost nothing to do with their strategy.SPIERS: I, I think I, I definitely think that the secular factors were at work there. I, I wouldn’t go so far as to say, to say any Democrat.SHEFFIELD: I mean, it’s hard. I said, well, I said they had to be competent!SPIERS: Yeah. Fair.SHEFFIELD: And then the same thing also by the way, is true about. Barack Obama in 2008, I would say, because like if you look at polls about, what is the public opinion about what’s your, what is your view of the economy, like the state of the economy and how it’s going, 1992, it was like a, it had a steep slide sorry 2008 had a, it was a steep slide. And so like, again, uh, and then you had the, the Katrina disaster and the Iraq disaster. Like any of those Democrats that were running that year that had a, that were in the top tier candidates, they would’ve won.Now I think Obama himself as a candidate would, was a very good candidate. But the strategy and the positioning they were not as important as his qualities as a candidate and then the overall environment.SPIERS: He wasn’t a progressive, he was, he was a fairly centrist candidate [00:10:00] on, on most levels. So I, I don’t think that Democrats were making a radically different choice, except in the sense that they elected the first, black man as president. I, I think on a policy basis, Obama was not, a radical departure from prior Democrats.SHEFFIELD: But I’m just saying as in that the, like this idea of lionizing presidential strategists because they took part in a campaign that largely would’ve won without them,SPIERS: Yeah. Well, I think it’s Carvile and the war room did a lot to sort of turn those people into quasi celebrities and as much as you can be one, and, and, the tiny sphere, political world. So I, I think that that’s sort of like an an x-factor that, I wrote a column for the Times about how I thought people of that generation had also been brainwashed by the West Wing.And, and for similar reasons. And, and I think sometimes there’s a culture that evolves that, or sometimes devolves a around the way political operatives think about the world that’s really driven by outside portrayals of what happened. And, and I think that’s why we’re, we’re all stuck with Carville.SHEFFIELD: Yeah,SPIERS: About everything.SHEFFIELD: I, yeah, I think that’s a really good point. But, so for, I think a lot of people, they maybe have been too young to have watched that show though, so maybe why don’t you give us a little summary for those who are not familiar.SPIERS: So people who are obsessed with the West Wing would dispute my characterization of this, but that’s because I, I find the West Wing kind of catchy and sometimes insufferable, uh, and, and it’s basically the paradigm of the West Wing is that you have. Essentially, well-meaning President and Jed Bartlett, who is ostensibly a Democrat.Uh, but Bartlett is continually reaching across the aisle to equally well-meaning, but wrongheaded Republicans. And fundamentally, everybody at the end of the day wants America to be, [00:12:00] unified and not divided. And, uh, it, it’s this sort of it, it’s a sort of chorus that you hear a lot in Democratic messaging that talks about bipartisan cooperation, uh, or, you know, the idea that really, you know, we just need to talk to each other, that we have a, a sort of dialogue problem and not political problems.Uh, and that’s not to say that, the West Wing never got into the weeds, but there would be, there were a lot of kind of saccharin moments where theSHEFFIELD: And we should say it’s, and I’m sorry, I should say it’s Aaron Sorkin.SPIERS: Yes. And this sort of idea that there’s some vast homogenous middle that really wants all the same thing is, is something that the show kind of really is sort of built on, and the idea that there’s fundamentally not very much difference between the parties at, at the center.So I wrote this column for the Times about Democrats being brainwashed by the West Wing, and then a couple weeks later, Aaron Sor, Aaron Sorkin wrote a column for the time suggesting that if Democrats wanted to bring the country together, they should nominate MIT Romney as the candidate and the primary.And, and, I, I, I couldn’t ask for a better validation of my thesis, but that that mentality is still there. You, you hear it. And I mean, not just CarVal, but you know, a lot of people of his generation who have worked on that generation of campaigns. Talk about particularly a kind of fictionalized swing voter that always looks the same, and if, if you’re working in modern politics, you, and you have a lot of interaction with people who are actual swing voters, one thing that will become apparent to you very quickly is that not only are they not homogenous, they often vote for erratic and esoteric reasons. And that, ideology isn’t a linear continuum.It’s, it’s more like a 3D plot. You can be highly conservative on certain issues and highly liberal and others, or vice versa. And it doesn’t necessarily wholly [00:14:00] determine where you line up in a partisan lineup.How voters actually make decisionsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and also that people change their opinions a lot. In terms, especially in terms of candidates. If, if they’re, if they don’t have, as you said, if they don’t have a consistent ideology and you know that that’s what you would expect them to be doing, and that they are choosing in part based on personality.I mean, that’s or their personal vibe of a candidate. So like one, one thing in political science that is a, I mean, the, like, here’s the irony. I think the sad, sad irony of, of uh, democratic politics is that, the vast majority of political science professors are Democrats or for even further left.And yet the Democratic Party listens to them almost not at all doesn’tSPIERS: Well here, here’sSHEFFIELD: that they have to say. And sorry. Well, sorry. And just, and then like, and they, but.like,one of the things that they’ve said is that and studies have consistently shown that when you have a woman candidate voters are more likely to think that she’s more liberal and she actually is.And so, and so then that was true with Hillary, It’s true outside of the US also, that they assign liberalism to female candidates automatically subconsciously a lot of people do. And, and,andso I don’t, I, they didn’t really play into that at all or do anything about it as far as I saw it.Or very much, or, or, or at least, I don’t know. So like people, in other words, this is my long-winded way of saying that people vote based on their comfort. A lot of people just vote on their personal vibe. And, and if you can’t accept that and that they’re not voting on the issues, they’re just voting on, well, who, who makes me feel comfortable?SPIERS: Yeah, I think that’s, that’s very often true. I think that’s part of the reason why a lot of our messaging falls. We talk to people like they are the embodiment of, the platonic economic man who’s making a rational choice between different policies. And that’s just not the way most people think about it.[00:16:00]But, to, to your point about academic research, we don’t have a huge body of academic research around voter behavior that I think is enormously relevant in modern elections. Partly because in order to study it, you and, and I say this, having worked with academics in some randomized controlled field experiments first of all, you, you have to be able to find people who can do these studies who are not partisan aligned.If, if they’re going to be, if they’re going to meet all of the, sort of fairly rigorous. Study constraints that would lead them to being disseminated outside of partisan circles. Another thing is that, if you’re studying elections, especially presidential elections, they only happen every four years.It’s very difficult to draw massive conclusions when you have, you have, there’s one big national set of data, and it’s the national election survey that comes out, well after the election. But with that kind of frequency, we, at best, we can kind of look at the data and make some reasonable assumptions, and then we might be wrong about all of them.It’s, it’s not like a, a strictly. It’s not like testing something where you have a lot of frequency and you can see patterns emerging over time. It’s, it’s really just we’re working with what we have. And our explanations are heavily determined by historical context and what we’ve seen before, which is why we miss a lot of stuff, especially if it’s emergent and it just hasn’t showed up in earlier elections.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point too. But evenso, I mean,there’s just, there’s so much in political science that has come out in terms like when they do, ’cause you can run things with, house races or other countries or like, sothere aresome things that, and of course, yeah, it’s, it’s still nothing’s definitive.But nonetheless, like one of the things that is pretty unanimous is that campaign money. Doesn’t really do anything very much in at the executive [00:18:00] level. So, you know, at the national level, the brand of the presidential candidates is no, like people know who they are, and watching another ad about it isn’t going to make you interested in supportingthem.Not at all.SPIERS: I think at the presidential level that’s absolutely true. I, I think down ballot, it, it does unfortunately make a huge difference.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, andthat’sbecause name recognition is much, much less. So yeah,SPIERS: Well, and, and there’s less, less earned media too. That’s, that’s, it’s hard to sort of calculate the value of that.SHEFFIELD: That’s true. Yeah. So, but you know, so I mean, still as it is though so much of the, the democratic calculus, it does, it fits into this nineties messaging model I think, in that not just in terms of thinking that people have consistent, moderate preferences, but also in that they think that, well, we were just going to have the right message, the perfect message uh, and the one, the one message to rule them all, if you’ll, And that’s not how things work anymore nowadays.SPIERS: And they workshop it to death, and you end up with not just one message. It’s, it’s always the most anodyne, uncompelling thing ever. One of the things I, I thought during the first Trump campaign, uh, when Jared Kushner hired Brad Parscale, Parscale was coming out of lead generation and digital marketing didn’t know shit about politics.But that turned out to be a little bit of a strength. And the chaos of the administration turned out to work to their advantage because Parscale would just throw shit against the wall and see what stuck. And they were not. You know, there was no real message control. But as a result, you sort of had a defacto experimental environment where, you know, they would just try stuff and they sort of understood better than I think we did, that the media cycle is so fast that if you put out a message that doesn’t work or you know, there’s some downside liability to it, it’s going to disappear in like two days.It’s going to be [00:20:00] out of the discourse. And so as a result, they were able to, I think, surface a bunch of messages that worked and they, they didn’t feel the need to like consolidate them into a consistent platform because they didn’t, Trump didn’t have that kind of consistency. So they, you know, would target one message to a specific audience that they thought it would resonate with and then say exactly the opposite thing to another audience.And, that’s not an honest way to communicate with voters, but it was effective for them.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, yeah, shameless dishonesty can be an advantage on the campaign show. whoSPIERS: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t advise that we adopt that. I, on principle, so,SHEFFIELD: yeah.Well, and, and as a long-term matter, it, it doesn’t work either because, and we saw in 2024 that the Trump did worse among people who followed politics more so like the people who had paid attention and had been listening to what he was saying.They did not support And so, and, and, but then of course the Democrats, they had theother,kind of, the other problem in that, a lot of democratic consulting tends to have kind of a, a fixed model of, of non-white voters in thinking that, well, they’re going to support.TheDemocrats because they’re this race.Or people, well, women will support or women will support Harris ’cause she’s a woman. Or Asians will support her ’cause she’s a, Asian and none of those things turned out to be true.SPIERS: Well, I think that’s, it depends on which population. I, I agree that, nobody’s going to support a candidate solely based on identity. I don’t think that that means that identity isn’t important. If you’re looking at, particularly there, there are a lot of minority populations that vote so consistently democratic and, if, if population is voting, 80 plus percent, it’s, it’s a fair statement to say that population generally skews democratic and, and to sort of assume in the next election that unless you fuck it up, they’re still going to [00:22:00] vote that way.But I, I do think I don’t think you can take it for granted that those populations are always going to turn out for you. And this is where I, I think there are a lot of people who don’t really distinguish between turnout and where natural constituencies lie. I, I think when Democrats screw up serving their, their core base, a lot of those people just stay home.They don’t turn around and vote for Republicans, but they do stay home. And, and I think that’s why you, you sort of can’t ignore the people who have shown up for you the most consistently and very often that is, less, women as a class, but minorities certainly white women have done plenty of voting for Trump.But you know, I, I, so I, my feeling is you can’t pin everything on identity. You also can’t dismiss it. So,Democgraphic identities and economic issues are linkedSHEFFIELD: Yeah, but it’s, and it’s also that these, identity markers, if you’ll are, or characteristics they are correlated to policies in a general sense. So you know that if you are a woman who, might want to have an abortion at some point in your life, then you know, it’s not a, it is not to your advantage to vote for Republicans.SPIERS: Or if you just need to be on birth control for hormonal reasons, you know, all there, there are things that people just don’t even, I I, I think the people who are sort of dismissive of identity and politics sometimes don’t realize how deep those political choices, the policy choices affect specific populations.You know, they don’t, you know, really understand the extent to which housing, uh, is heavily driven by race in a lot of places. Or, environmental regulations, environmental justice is something that I’ve worked on before. Where, you know, we had a, in fact, one of my first. Policy experiences was in college when I was working on a a project for the Alabama attorney general’s office about a, a stockpile of chemical weapons in Anniston, Alabama that we’d had been sitting around since the Korean War and the military [00:24:00] was trying to figure out how to dispose of them.Uh, and they consistently wanted to dump them in the backyards of these predominantly black poor communities. So that’s the kind of thing that, you know, it’s like if I said, how does chemical weapon disposal policy, how is that related to identity? It may not be facially related to you, but you know, whenever you, you sort of, if you’re, if you’re black person who lives in that area of anniston, you absolutely know why identity is matters in that case.And these things aren’t apparent to, especially to voters who don’t fall into those groups of people who are affected because you’re just not aware of it. It’s, it’s not part of your life. And so most voters don’t walk around with some global knowledge of how. All policies affect everybody else.They, they really only understand how policies affect them for the most part.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Well, and I guess the, the reason I’m bringing it up though is just that they, it seems like a lot of the strategies tend to just kindof, theylook at the trends and they just assume they will continue. And, and like on the Republicanside, Republicans didn’treally try very much to get the votes of black Americans, like,SPIERS: they don’t have to, I mean, their, their identity politics based too, but their politics are different. Their, their, their identities are primarily, white, Christian, straight men. That’s, that’s theirSHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. Well, but no, what, what I’m saying though is that Trump actually did try to forward his campaign among black Americans. He, was, was inviting Amber Rose, to speak at the RNC for instance. Or constantly going on these MMA podcasts things like that, that and, and, and, and it worked.I mean, at the end of the day, this was outreach that he was doing, and Harris, and were, invited before her were not doing it. YouSPIERS: I would disagree with that, but yeah,SHEFFIELD: well, they weren’t doing the podcast. They weren’t that’sSPIERS: I, I don’t think the podcast [00:26:00] specifically univer, I mean, and she was doing podcasts. She didn’t do Rogan, but she did a lot of podcasts. And also certainly Kamala Harris was reaching out to the black community. She spent a lot more time there than Trump did. Uh, I think Trump did stuff that was unusual for a Republican candidate, not in terms of reaching out to, uh, minority populations.But in terms of doing the stuff that prior candidates would’ve considered lowbrow, like, doing the mf MFA, you know, that sort of thing. But I think that has more to do with Trump’s personality. Uh, you know, where, where he feels comfortable, truly, and than it does, you know, any sort of strategic outreach to certain populations.I think, it, that was a collateral effect. If anything.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean, you could say that to that Yeah, I mean, this is, he was a wwe sideshow, so, being interested in, in fight television obviouslySPIERS: Now we’re all just a WW side show.SHEFFIELD: Well, and we’re going to have that in the 4th of July later this yearSPIERS: money.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. But, I, I, at the same time, I, it’s, well, and actually that, that does raise another point that, I, Republicans they also, to a large degree, I think they’re the strategies that they’ve had.Havebenefited because of who he’s, So like, I think that there’s a lot of people who would not vote for Republic, except for they would vote for him. Because, they like his crassness. They like his offensiveness, they like his misogyny. They, they like his race, racist, open racism, and like some people, and, and that also is even true, across racial groups.’cause Trump got more numbers than any Republican before him. Outside of Reagan in 84 the highest numbers among black Americans and Hispanic American. I mean, almost, he got a majority of Hispanic men to vote for him in 2024. So, but like, but I guess what I’m saying [00:28:00] though, like a lot of the things.Trump’s appeal across demographicsSHEFFIELD: So this is me giving a caveat, basically saying that, saying, when that there’s a trend that certain things are going this way, it could just simply be that he, he’s a unique candidate because I don’t see a lot ofthese, WW fans being like, oh yeah, JD Dance, ISPIERS: I I think that’s, that’s true. But you know, I, I also wrote a times column about this theory of hegemonic masculinity, which sounds more complicated than it is. It basically says that if you live in a culture where you believe that the dominant hierarchy of power as it is, is the natural order of things.That’s called hegemonic masculinity. But it, but it’s not just about masculinity. In fact, I think they should call it something else because it’s, it’s about the intersection of power at every part of the hierarchy. So that includes, race class, you know, whether or not you’re able bodied, stuff like that.So the top of the hierarchy is able-bodied, straight white dudes. Bottom is, you know, everybody else. And so if you believe that that hierarchy is the natural state of things, that more than anything would’ve predicted your vote choice in 2020 and 2024 and 2016. Um, and there’s, I, I cited in my column some research around that.And when you look at the, the, the places where you did see some demographic shifts, that still makes sense because. Especially among, you know, Hispanic community is, is not a monolith Cuban Americans and Mexican Americans in particular skew more conservative for different reasons, but they do, about a third of all Hispanic people vote Republican consistently.And where you see differences, you know, it’s a swing 5% in one direction or the other. Black men consistently vote, uh, a small portion of them vote Republican. So I, I don’t think that Trump did anything cataclysmically there. I, I think what did happen is he projected a kind of strong strongman image that’s [00:30:00] consistent with that hierarchy that puts the right people at the bottom of it and the right people at the top of it.Uh, and that’s what particularly, you know, I think of, you know, my mother’s side of the family, I’m adopted, but my biological family’s Mexican and all my Mexican uncles and. They, they’re all pretty conservative and they do have like a kind of machismo orientation toward the world. So they love Trump.They think that, I mean, they don’t love him as much at the moment, but when, when he started running, he was emblematic of something that they think of as, as, you know, sort of American strongman, you know, he’s an entrepreneur. He’s big and tough. He’s got a lot of bravado.SHEFFIELD: in America.SPIERS: Yeah. Yeah. So I, I don’t think it was sort of like Latinos shifting to Trump.It was a little bit of what you’re saying. They, they, they liked his personality for all the reasons that make him sort of mostly a bad president. But they, they sort of like the idea of that person, like a, a strong man who embodies these macho, characteristics.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, yeah. And, and so, I mean, and, and that is, circling back to what we were talking about earlier, with regard to the, the, the the end, if you will, at the, in the social science term, the number of elections, it’s just so small. It, it’s hard to know for sure about anything.And, and so I think you,I meanreally to, to a large degree, we, you could operate from the idea and it would be hard, I think, to. To disprove itthat,a lot of the presidential the presidential elections are mostly decided by external factors and thatpartiesthat want to,and,and this is why both parties have been stuck, because they don’t, they don’t make an affirmative case for their own ideology.And, and, and [00:32:00] that’s why, that’s they’re, they’re basically, they’re fighting at the 40 yard line or the 50 yard line back and forth 40 on the other side. Like, to use a football analogy, that that’s essentially what’s been going on since the nineties but neither party’s really been able to, to have a kind of blowout type victory.Or to the extent that Obama had a, a bigger one in 2008. He kind of, didn’t really use it.Democrats playing defense on trans issuesSPIERS: Yeah. One of my concerns is that Democrats are still, like, they, you know, this is a hangover from the nineties stuff, but we’re so often playing defense and refusing to play offense for fear that if you say something, even a little bit too liberal, seeming that the right will weaponize it. And, and to me that’s just an incredibly naive viewpoint.They’re going to weaponize it no matter what it is. And it does not matter if you run on it or not. You know, you see this with trans issues and, and, you know, defund the police. Which nobody ran on. But if you, if you were paying attention right wing media, you would think that it was the number one platform for every Democrat in America.And it’s so, it’s become so ubiquitous that our failure to talk about it and to really, you know, litigate our actual positions on these things mean that I’ve had, people who are liberal democrats, who are reasonably well-informed, people who subscribe to newspapers, repeat right wing hoax stuff.To me that’s just coming out of that sort of rhetoric around either defund or trans issues. Like, do you remember the hoax about high school kids identifying as cats and putting litter boxes in bathrooms? Do you know how many Democrats I’ve had tell me that story? And I had to explain to them that it was generated by a right wing blog.It went viral in right wing media, and now somehow it has made its way back to them. And because Democrats have been largely silent on trans issues. People think this is true. Like it’s, it’s, we’re, we’re handing them the instruments of our own demise. Whenever we refuse to articulate what we actually do stand for, for fear that it might alienate some [00:34:00] hypothetical potential swing voter.SHEFFIELD: yeah, yeah. That’s, and, and trans issues are a, a great, probably the best example of that because, the, the and, and, and it’s worth recalling that before, the movement for transrights became morepublic as it was,the backwhen the, the, fight for same-sex marriage was, that was the, the project the Democratic Party wouldn’t help at that either.And, and that that was done by the actress. And eventuallySPIERS: Well, and, and also Joe Biden accidentally blurting out that Obama tended to, was planning on doing it. That’s aSHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, but to get to that point though, it was the activistsSPIERS: yes, that’s true.SHEFFIELD: they, they, they, they realized eventually, oh, they’re never going to help us. We have to do it ourselves. But one thing that they had that was, that was different compared to now with trans rights is that pretty much everybody knows somebody who he is lesbian or gay.And that’s not the case with people who are trans. And so, and that makes the, that makes their portrayal in the media much more influential on people. because like everybody claims, oh, I don’t believe it’s a media, but in fact you do.SPIERS: they they just, they’re, they’re like, well, which media? I have people say that to me, in my family who are conservative and they’re like, but I watch Fox News. That’s the truth. And it’s like, well, that is media, everybody. Consume some kind of media and believe some kind of media.It’s just a question of which media, what sources. But to your point another area where you see this, there’s research that says that exposure helps reduce bigotries in every situation except misogyny because there’s no one who doesn’t know a woman or have women in their lives.But you also see this being weaponized against Muslims. Islamophobia in this country is huge [00:36:00] because, where you do have Muslim populations, they’re usually in pockets in large cities. When I, I, I grew up in rural Alabama, and when I go home, when I hear Islamophobic stuff, it’s usually coming from people who’ve literally never met a Muslim person and they’ve never met a trans person.And I’m not saying that, if they were exposed to, somebody, one person in their community, they would change their minds. But it is a function of. Not feeling threatened by these populations because you do understand their humanity. You are interacting with them, you understand them as part of the community that you live in, and that they have obligations to you and you have obligations to them.That’s the social contract.SHEFFIELD: That they are not hurting you,SPIERS: yes. Yes.SHEFFIELD: and that you know that from your own experience.SPIERS: Yeah. I mean, this is a, we were talking a little bit about Mamdani before we started. It’s, he’s a roshak test for a lot of people outside of New York. Because when they look at him, they, there, there are a lot of people who, first thing they see is that he’s not white, that he’s a Muslim.For other people it’s that he’s a socialist. And I find that, it’s, it’s a little bit ironic because I think a lot of the people who voted for Zoran in the primary didn’t know he was a socialist. Like, and, and I don’t think they gave a fuck. Like, I, I think that. He was successfully branded externally by the right as a scary brown Muslim socialist.And that’s just not how he was viewed here because he was heavily evaluated on, what he ran on who came out for him what the policies were and what his concerns were. And, to your point about identity, he didn’t go out and say, you should elect me because I, I would be the first Muslim socialist mayor of New York City.In fact that that never led any of his conversations. He, he sort of takes it for granted that, that and that it’s obvious. And, he ran on a really compelling affordability platform that I think a lot of, machine democrats here don’t want to run on because [00:38:00] we do still have a lot of money in politics and the real estate industry in particular is very powerful.So making housing a key part of your plank. Is a little risky for especially a Democratic pol politician who coming into the primary might not have enough name ID to, to make it to the general.Trump and Mamdani put in the personal ground work that their rivals did notSHEFFIELD: Yeah.Well, and yeah, no, and, and he’s, I think he is definitely worth focusing on here. Because, in addition to, and, and, and I do want to circle back to your, to your point about, affordability and not, and also he did the work as a candidate, and, and that’s, that is one of the other things that, that Trump has as an advantage compared to past Republican candidates is that.Say what you will about him, but that guy was out there, doing seven rallies a day, toward the end of the campaign. And, like he, and, and when Joe Biden, by contrast, did almost nothing for a long time.SPIERS: I think with Trump it’s, it’s people sort of viewing his rallies as hard work, especially when he is golfing, like he is just,SHEFFIELD: But they’re effective though, like,SPIERS: They’re effective because they’re, they’re about visibility and, and that, that is, you are, I think you’re absolutely right that that matters.I think, when Pete Buttigieg ran his publicist was Liz Smith, and one thing that I think she did that re, that Democratics are usually reluctant to do is, she booked him everywhere. She had him appear on any show that called, he would show up to the opening of an envelope.When you don’t have name id, you need to do that. But also, if you want to convince people that you are out in the community and you’re doing stuff that’s also really important. And historically, the way that Democrats treat comms around candidates is that it’s tightly controlled. We’re only going to give tight interviews to preferred outlets.We’re going to make sure that nothing, impromptu happens. And you just can’t run a campaign like that anymore like that. That’s a 1990s era prescription. And we have [00:40:00] a 24 hour news cycle. People want to see the candidates all the time, not just trotted out like a priest coming out of a cathedral once a week.And, and I, I think Trump doing rallies and constantly being on social and constantly being on tv, he, he’s spent a lot of time making himself visible. Not so much time working at his job, but it is effective. It makes people think that he’s ubiquitous and that he’s constantly on.SHEFFIELD: Oh Yeah. Well, that’s what I meant whenI said doing the work, doing the work as a candidate as a president. Yeah. He does not do the work. But, but yeah, and like to that point though, like, this fear of saying something wrong or saying the wrong thing, I mean, That’s over and that’s over it.Obviously that’s over in the Republican side, with Trump. But, but I mean, you had Greg Gianforte, he assaulted a reporterand he stillwon his election. But even, Jay Jones, the, who just won the attorney general ship of Virginia, he said pretty awful thing.And, he still won his election and he and so like people and so, so being concerned that you might make a sillystatementmuch less an offensive, horrible one. Like you need to get over that. And I think that that’s, that is another thing that that mom Donny really also did well is that he was always out there.So not, not just ’cause he did lots of door knocking and lots of volunteers. And he didn’t do a lot of, of, TV ads. We I shouldSPIERS: He also, yeah.SHEFFIELD: but, but, but he was, he was doing interview, he was letting anyone interview him basically that was interested init because,because,he was starting almost from nothing.SPIERS: Yeah. Well, he’s, he’s, so, he was an experienced field guy. You know, one of the things that I, I think Cuomo did that really fell flat was run around pretending that he was an intern who had never had a job before. Uh, because the people who were, you know, coming out to organize for him, the, the politicians who were endorsing him big members of his co coalition and, and, you know, [00:42:00] core voting constituencies, especially in the primary, knew who he was already because he had.He was an experienced field organizer, and he had worked on Tiffany Ban’s DA campaign, which he only lost by like a handful of votes. And, and so he was not an unknown here to people who, you know, would’ve been interested in the primary. And when Cuomo got up and said, you know, treated him like he was a child, and then you see mom Donny doing this straight to camera messaging where he’s talking very knowledgeably about in particular housing policy because he had also been an eviction counselor.It sort of makes Cuomo look like he’s running a lazy campaign. He doesn’t have anything that he’s running on except for his, family name and history as governor. And so it, it sort of was an opportunity for Mond campaign, viewed it as an opportunity for contrast and not a liability. Uh, and of course they were good at social media.And this is, this is, it was so funny when. Cuomo lost their primary, and when asked to reflect on it, his only takeaway was I should have been on TikTok more. Just a wild misunderstanding of why Mom Donny was resonating with people. It’s like, yeah, you, you know, it’s confusing the medium with the message.SHEFFIELD: I think some people on the Democratic side are starting to realize this, but, so much of what Momani did effectively as candidate obviously his message and platform were very relevant.But, a lot of what hedo does andhow he says things,theyhave nothing to do with his ideology. And that people, the, the people want a candidate who can speak off the cuff. they the, and in a lot of ways, the, the social media age is kind of in some ways taking us back to the way things were before.Because when, it, when Mass Media first became a thing. It, it was this,the, you hadthis this concentration of [00:44:00] attention in just a handful of outlets. And so everyone expected everything to be, perfectly produced and amazingly staged. And, and, and this, and, and, and, and that wasn’t how the politics werebefore.And so, before it was, you’re out there pressing the flesh and that was how you won. And so, in the social media age we’re, we’re going back to that in a lot of ways that people want to, They just, they want to hear what you actually think. They don’t care what your workshop, poll tested focus, groupmessage that you’re going to repeat 20 times in two minutes.They don’t want that.SPIERS: Some of it too is New York City DSA has become a kind of training ground for a certain kind of candidate, uh, because they’re really good at field organization and they’re not as much, you know, especially compared to establishment Democrats, they’re not as top down in terms of controlling message, you know, being control freaks about talking to specific populations a specific way.Uh, there was a lot of organic messaging coming from, uh, not ban’s organic campaign staff, but from volunteers. They had corralled and trained. So it was sort of the equivalent of having, you know, where Parscale threw a million different digital ads against the wall and tested them all on Facebook. With mom Dining campaign, you know, they had the people who were highly engaged, who were, you know, committed volunteers would come up with their own messaging, they’d make their own merch.They would talk to people, you know, they, they weren’t, if you’ve ever been canvassing for a very mainstream democratic candidate, you’re often given, you know, this very tight messaging, and you, you’re only supposed to respond certain way. I have not met a single mom, Donny Canvasser, who behaved that way.You know, they were, they’re just, um, more eng willing to engage people and, you know, have conversations about the core issues without needing to, control the language. One of the things in my West Wing column that I wrote about that still drives me crazy is how [00:46:00] much establishment Democrats workshop the messaging so much.You know, they, there’s nothing wrong with poll testing messaging within constraints, but they end up talking to people in a way that like no normal human would talk to them. You know, there was, uh, early in the, when Kamala was at the beginning of her sudden presidential campaign I remember the Democratic, the DNC account tweeted out something like, Donald Trump is for main Street, not Wall Street.And I thought that, did they just dig that out of a crypt from 1992? Like, nobody talks like that. You know, you, you, if you want to say Donald Trump is, you know, in the pocket of Wall Street, there are ways to say that the way you would say it if you were sitting next to somebody at a bar. They would nod and be like, fuck.Yeah. That’s also, I’m sorry I, I curse a lot, is that I’m allowed to on slate money, so I, I just habitually. But you know, we we’re, and I think these you know, younger campaign campaign staffed by younger staffers are not, haven’t been programmed to do that. They’re, they’re programmed to talk to people like their normal humans because they part like, because they spend so much time on the internet and social media and the people that resonate with them are, are communicating that way.And, and so I think the way mom Donny talks to people, it’s like normal person talking to you at a bar about something they’re passionate about and not, they’re not handing down some tablets with the official, messaging lines on them.SHEFFIELD: Well, and, and that is another thing that Trump does very well also.SPIERS: does it because he, he can’t, he’s not capableSHEFFIELD: well, that’s I was going to say, that. Oh yeah, he’s not smart enough to stick to the script or the message. But you know, as it turns out, that’s not what people want anyway. So like that, that, that, that’s the, I think there is a fear among some Republican strategists,andyou do hear it vocalized every once in a while that they’re saying, you know what, after this guy [00:48:00] we’re fucked.because nobody likes us. And nobody likes our people. And so, but of course the, as I was saying about this, the fighting over the 50 yard I think if Democrats can’t make an affirmative case, then they will have just, temporarilyhad what,what Biden had, in, in 2020 They just, yeah, they got rid of Trump, but they weren’t able to, really move the ball forward in terms of,SPIERS: Here’s a ISHEFFIELD: rolling back these problems that the Republicans across the country.SPIERS: I wrote a thing for the New Republic about what National Democrats could learn from Mom Donny. And whenever I, I first published it, there’s a lot of friends of mine who are, who are more centrist democrats, like, read the headline, be like, New York City isn’t the rest of the country.And I would say, I know that, read the column. Because the, the thing that he did that I think was so effective and could work for, any Democrat is just articulating the things that we’re going to do to fight the bad things that are happening. Brad Lander, who teamed up with mom Donny at the last minute, he was a, another New York City mayoral candidate and they’re buddies now.But La Lander sort of characterized it, as people are now being forced to choose between fighters and folders. And they want fighters. And there are just too many instances of them seeing Democrats kind of publicly folding or saying, well, we can’t do anything. We’re not in power right now.And they want to see the people they elected try, even if they fail. So Mati coming in and saying, okay, here, here are five, kind of, out there policies. And by the way, none of them are that radical. But it, if you’re sitting, I don’t know if you’re watching Fox News or something, maybe like, we’re going to have one free bus line, we’re going to have five grocery stores run by the city.SHEFFIELD: actually have free buses in Salt Lake City, Utah,Actually.SPIERS: yeah.And, and every military base in the country has a government run grocery store and people fucking love it. [00:50:00] But the, the point is, even when those are cast as radical policies which leaving aside the fact that they’re not. People want to see their elected officials try to do something to make life better.They want to see improvements, they want to see, trying, they don’t want to be told repeatedly that things cannot be done or, or because they couldn’t be done 30 years ago, we’re not going to try them now. Which is another kind of nineties itis thing that I think we have were things that would absolutely work.And, with constraints now, did not work then. And so it’s like, well, we tried that once, let’s just not do it again. So what Mamdani was offering people is, first of all, the absolute understanding that he would fight for New York City. Which is probably the only advantage that maybe Cuomo did have coming in, is that he has a reputation for belligerence.Maybe people thought that he was going to be a New York City strong man and stand up to Trump, although increasingly it looked like that wasn’t going to be the case, and, and then mom Donny also said, we’re going to try some stuff and if it fails, it fails, but we want to make life here more affordable.And here are some programs that actually help people. And, and I think we are bad about doing that. Whenever we do, we, we, we offer promises to try very incremental things that are usually highly technocratic complicated tax credits, et cetera. Instead of doing the simplest thing that people just want, they want, they want simple problem solved easily.There’s a, a good example is Leanna Kahn tried to in institute a, a, a new role that if you sign up for something on the internet, you should be able to cancel it just as easily. It got pulled back because of some bureaucratic stuff, but it’s supposedly probably going to be instituted again.And that’s the kind of thing that it doesn’t matter what party you’re in, you’re like, yes, that makes sense. That is good for people. And so I, I don’t think, first of [00:52:00] all, most people, most voters didn’t really think of Ma Donni as a socialist first. They thought of him as a candidate who had a specific vision for what New York was going to be.AndSHEFFIELD: And hadsome enthusiasm and. Yeah. And that that you could see that he actually cared. You could see it.SPIERS: Yeah. I mean, even Curtis Lewes toward the end was like it was just sort of sick of Cuomo and he showed up to Mom Donny’s inauguration and people were interviewing him and he said, look, I believe the guy cares about New York City and he’s going to try. And, it was largely complimentary.And, and I think when you, if you watch the debates, Lee was discussed with Cuomo was largely that he thought, Cuomo thought he had it in the bag and didn’t have to work for it. And, what was he going to do that was going to be different? SoCurtis Sliwa as an example of a Republican who likes an anti-oligarch message and agendaSHEFFIELD: Well, and, and also speaking of sweet Sliwa, he also even after the, the campaign was over in January, was talking about.Thathe, he was against the billionaires. everybody in this country hates these oligarchs. And so if the Democrats, were able, like they, they, they claim to be data driven.Well, gosh, you have a, you have a, you have a group,that,uh, everybody dislikes and for a justifiable reason, like who is a bigger threat to the average American Elon Musk or a trans woman trying to go to the bathroom. Hmm. You know, like the, the, this is you, you couldn’t ask for a better thing.And but they, but they, but they don’t, they they don’t know how to do it. And also they don’t want to do it. I think aSPIERS: Yeah. Some of it’s we have an asymmetry, the Republican Party, it’s entire platform is, is we can cater to billionaires ’cause we’re a pro billionaire. For Democrats it’s hard to run against billionaires when our biggest donors are also billionaires. And we do have money in politics. And I’ve seen this directly when, [00:54:00] when you’re trying to get progressive media outlets funded.The right has no shortage of people willing to write checks for right wing newsrooms because they’re not worried that those newsrooms are going to turn around and say, we need to raise taxes on billionaires. But a progressive newsroom would probably put billionaires under, under the microscope.And, and so we, it’s hard to get, it’s hard to get these things funded on our side.SHEFFIELD: yeah, although,there is a, there is an interesting kind of wrinkle to that, which is that, so when Trump was,when hewas first running, all the Republican billionaires hated him actually. And so his fundraising numbers from them were almost nothing. He got almost nothing from them.But he ended up. Getting more money because he got more money from the base. And that same dynamic is true in the Democratic party as well, that the Republican party is much, much, much more dependent on like five or six people than the Democratic party is. And so like, but, and so this is another kind of stuck in the, the nineties kind of scenario that the Democratic party as it has like this is both, it’s there, there’s some negatives to this, but the fact that the Democratic party has drastically improved its vote share among white collar professionals means that the, the small dollar donor base in the Democratic party is enormous.And it can easily compensate for any loss of billionaires,SPIERS: Well, I, I would say maybe a few years ago that would be true. Now I think there are enough billionaires in Trump’s court that he’s got plenty of resources and I worryabout the fact that we, have consumer spending fullbacks and, small donors are really stretched right now. Yeah, I generally agree with you though.SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, okay. I mean, that’s fair. But yeah, I mean, if, as the economy go down, but on the other hand, that motivates people as well. So, plus minus. But, now that he’s taken [00:56:00] office though, Malani, he, he gave his inaugural speech and and, and one of the other things that happened since he took office ’cause we, heard during the campaign and Cuomo said it and lots of Republicans said it, that if this guy gets elected, all the rich people are going to leave this city.Well, theySPIERS: Oh, I love it when they threaten to do that. They do it every single time. You know, a, a progressive gets anywhere near a position of power. Uh, but the reality is, you know, new York’s wealth is heavily centered in the financial industry, uh, and, you know, commercial real estate, things like that. And these are the same guys I was talking about earlier who idolize Great Gordon Gecko and think of him as a role model and not a cautionary tale.Those people are so ego-driven, they’re not, they, they want to be, you can’t be a master of the universe from Boca Rat Time, Florida. You just can’t, like, they’re, they’re part of their entire identity is wrapped up in being a big. Sky in New York City, not in some random town with lower taxes in Texas. So the idea that, and, and also New York is a global hub.It’s, it’s, it’s sort of an important place because of its geography and centrality and, and things like that, uh, that you can’t replicate. You can’t have a pile of billionaires. Just, this is also why they all keeptalkingSHEFFIELD: not going to get a flight to Riyadh from Boca Vu?SPIERS: yeah, they, they all want to go live on some libertarian paradise island, but they don’t go do it.Because what would be the fun of that? Like, they,SHEFFIELD: Well, because it would suck. That’swhy.SPIERS: Yeah. And they, they know that, so they’re not going anywhere.SHEFFIELD: No, they’re not. I, mean, evenSPIERS: would, I would love it if they left. I, maybe it might, be less expensive around here, butSHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean even,EvenFox News, like, which is basically every single day saying, oh, New York is a hellhole. New York is a shithole,SPIERS: While they sit in front of a window where you can see New Yorkers peering in the tourists. Kind of, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.So like, there, these [00:58:00] are all meaningless threats.And the same thing is true even much, much more so at the national level that, the, the American market is so big and so multi Ferris and there’s so much so many resources here and smart people that making people pay their fair share. Is a no brainer. Like they can afford it and they’re not going to leave. And if they did, they would be idioticSPIERS: Well,SHEFFIELD: no one else wants them.SPIERS: what’s so insufferable about so many of the, the vocal oligarchs is that they have such a mentality that no one appreciates them and they’re really victims. And so, the sort of underlying point. When they say, I’m going to move out of New York, is, is that New York will fall apart without them.And the reality is most of them don’t even pay taxes in New York anyway. They have sort of, everything’s in some offshore shelter. And so I, I don’t think, they’re not,SHEFFIELD: And whatever they’re doing, a hundred otherSPIERS: goes somewhere else. Yeah, it’s, but it, it’s the poor me. No one appreciates me.The little people don’t understand how much money I, I spend on philanthropy in order to get tax breaks and restructure my own finances, blah, blah, blah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.Well, and, and, and when you look at just the, the numbers, likethe, the investment in of the federal government back to the national level but the investment of federal government in education or in infrastructure or housing , and regulatory consumer regulatory kit helping people not get nicked and dime to death.All of that’s gone down starting with Reagan. And so the, the,youknow, it was like this was an experiment that was tried and it didn’t work, and, and, and Democrats should say that, just, just tell people this isthe storyof what’s happened. And then, you know, Reagan came along and he, and he, and he took away he made, he stopped making people pay their fair share because they were benefiting from our country and our government and our.[01:00:00] System. And look what’s happened. They, they haven’t shared the wealth. They said that it would help the economy and help us, you know, become, you know, I have all this opportunity and whatnot. Well, it didn’t work. And now you can’t support a family on one income. Now you can’t buy a house like the average age of a home buyer.Now I read recently is 52 of, uh, of, of a first time home. That is awful. That’s awful. And it used to be, in, in the late seventies, it was like 32. So that’s, that’s the measure of where we are and just simply saying this stuff and telling people what happened.’Cause I, I, I think that’s overall is the biggest problem of what That they don’t tell people what’s happening and what has happened.And this ain’t like with Biden, sorry. And like with Biden, when he, he was doing the, the student loan forgiveness initiative people liked it. And then Republican sued and the Republican Supreme Court blocked it. But he never told people why they, whythat happenedSPIERS: yeah, I got into, I got into a big fight when I was still on Twitter with a Biden person who, who kept saying like, well, no, but we made an announcement. We had a press conference the other day, and, and it’s like you’re missing the point. That, that is such an old, outdated style of communicating to the electorate.Like, you don’t not do it, but you gotta do a million other things and you have to say it over and over again. And this is another area where Trump’s style of communication is not strategic. It’s just Trump being Trump. It’s, it’s, he, he’s a braggart. He can only hold three messages in his ti in his head at one time.And so, as a result, as a result, he repeats himself a lot. And, and that sort of has the, the utility for Republicans of, people being, hearing the same message over and over again. And he takes credit for everything that he does in the most obnoxious way possible. We don’t, we’re like, well, we, we all did this at as a team and we worked hard with Republicans and here’s our policy brief.And, and it just doesn’t break through the noise. But also it doesn’t sound like a big deal [01:02:00] because Trump comes in and he says, I did this little thing, but it was the greatest, most amazing. And it doesn’t matter that he’s full of shit and he’s being hyperbolic, it’s still just, it takes up more of the oxygen in the room and we just don’t counter it,Democrats have to aim for gigantic majorities, not just ‘wins above replacement’SHEFFIELD: And and no, that Yeah, that’s a great point. And it, is just, just simple, basic.market.I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about here. That if you have this, this is, you are selling a product and you might not want to think of it that way, but guess what? That’s how it’s andsoyou, you have to have that mentality as well.And and if you get lucky and nobody in the Republican side can step up and, do that in the same way that Trump did. That’s, that’s not a vindication. of,of antiquated media strategy. That just means that you got lucky. And, we, this is not like the goal has to be, we have to figure out how can we get these FDR type majorities.Again, like that has to be the thought no more. Well, we’re just going to get a plurality. That’s that, that’s, we’re just going to get, enough electoral votes. Two 70. That’s all we need. We’re not going to worry about anything else. I mean, we’re, we’re, we’re going to optimize our house candidates and only compete in this, in the, in the places where we can, get uh, wins above replacement, blah, blah, blah.Like, this is all, it’s all nonsense and it’s fake. It’s fake data. It’s not real. And so you just need to getover it.SPIERS: Yeah, it, it’s, it’s also, I, there’s a lit, I see a little bit of a bright spot where there are people who, I think it’s beginning to sink in that communicating to the electorate is something that you have to do 24 7 indefinitely. It’s, it’s not just in the run up to an election. And it’s not just formal communication, I don’t see resources being spent that way yet.And unfortunately where I do see them being spent, they’re being given to the same old consultants who have been, recommending the top down, tightly controlled messaging [01:04:00] forever. But, republicans have always had like a 20 year view on comms. They’ve always sort of said, there there is no comms period.It’s, it’s a rolling thing, we’re always talking to the electorate. We’re always cultivating new voters. This is why a lot of people ask me, why don’t we have a turning point? Or something similar. And I way before Turning Point, I mean, the Republicans have always had sort of youth recruitment vehicles.I got recruited by the Federalist Society when I was a freshman in college. Like I, I don’t we don’t, we don’t build these things for long term, we’re, we’re way too focused on the next cycle and not the next two decades. And unfortunately, cycles get staffed and resourced only, part of every four years.And we don’t have enough permanent projects to really build the coalitions that you’re talking about, either organizationally or via messaging and comms. So,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that’s why it is, might possibly be the case that the solution to these problems is probably not inside of the party. ISPIERS: well, it, it’sI think insurgent candidates are helping, you know, they, they’re, because they are sort of forcing some people to rethink their, you know, the way that they look at how campaigns work, how the electorate consumes media stuff like that. So in as much as, you know, I, I would say like, I, like, I think AOCs campaign, you know, helped some people better understand how you should be communicating with voters.Not as many as I would’ve liked, but you know, now it’s like, well, is she an insurgent or she, she’s democrat. Like, she’s pretty clearly part of the party apparatus now. And I think the best case scenario is that for the party is that you have enough insurgents who come in with these talents. That, and, and we also just have some turnover in leadership, which I think, you know, needs to happen probably anyway.So yeah.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, it’s a, it is a story that we can [01:06:00] keep tabs on for quite a while, Mm-hmm.SPIERS: As long as we’re still here this time next year, it’sSHEFFIELD: yeah. Yeah. Well, fair point, fair point. Alright, well, so, Elizabeth for people who want to keep up with you what are doing, what’s your advice?SPIERS: Yeah, I’m a contributor to the New York Times opinion section and I also co-host a finance and econ podcast for Slate called Slate Money. And I send out my columns on my personal newsletter, which is just at elizabethspiers.com.SHEFFIELD: Sounds good, thanks for being here.SPIERS: Yeah. Thank you.SHEFFIELD: So that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation you can always get more if you go to flux.community where we’ve got lots of podcasts and articles about politics, religion, media and culture and how they all intersect. And if you are able to support us on Patreon or Substack, that would be great. You have free subscription options on both of those places. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux, or you can go to flux.community on the Substack side. 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Episode SummaryThe middle part of the twentieth century wasn’t that long ago, and yet in some ways, it seems like it was an eternity. That’s particularly true in regards to the public branding of American Christianity, which nowadays is often associated with right-wing evangelicalism.In the mid-20th century, however, American Christian public discourse was very different, and it was dominated by Protestants who were theologically liberal. Public intellectuals and leaders like John Foster Dulles, G. Bromley Oxnam, and William Ernest Hocking are mostly unknown to people today, but in their time, they were nationally famous.In the conversations they had with each other over the decades, they often disagreed on the particulars. But overwhelmingly, this group of ecumenical Protestants wanted a more just world, and were among the earliest white supporters of racial equality. They also worked for the creation of global systems that they hoped would protect human rights and religious freedom, such as the United Nations.Nowadays, the only people who use the term “new world order” are far-right conspiracy theorists, but it’s worth understanding just what they are seeking to destroy.Joining me to talk about the religious left and how it came to play a major role in the creation of the political order of the 20th century and what came afterward with the religious right is Gene Zubovich. He is the author of Before the Religious Right, Liberal Protestants, Human Rights and the Polarization of the United States. He’s also an assistant professor of history at the University at Buffalo.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.This episode previously aired in full on June 17, 2023.Related Content* The Christian Right was a theological rebellion against the idea of improving society* Why the decline of unions and moderate religious communities has led to political radicalization* How many low-engagement liberals became post-political and what to do about it* Government support for religious organizations seems to make citizens less devout* Despite Trump’s extremism, societal tolerance has actually increased dramatically and we shouldn’t forget that* How Christian fundamentalists rebuilt their faith using the tools of the world’s most famous atheist, Friedrich Nietzsche* Across the globe, Pentecostalism is spiriting away the membership of other Christian churchesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:53 — Ecumenical organizations and the birth of international organizations like the United Nations17:30 — The birth of the USSR and the American Christian left28:13 — John Foster Dulles: from religious lawyer to secretary of state38:48 — Building the kingdom of God on earth40:55 — The invention of the term “Judeo-Christian”46:21 — Political struggles within Roman Catholicism54:14 — Liberal Protestantism’s failure to defend its own intellectual tradition01:05:35 — The clergy-laity gap in mainline ProtestantismAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: It’s nice to have you here today, Gene.GENE ZUBOVICH: Yeah, thanks so much for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, so, let’s maybe just start with kind of the overview in what, who is this book about?ZUBOVICH: So this book is about a group of folks that are not [00:04:00] particularly prominent, familiar to most people. If you were like me and you grew up in the wake of the religious right, you forget that in the middle of the 20th century if you were to turn on a radio or a television set and you were to hear a religious voice, odds are it would be a liberal religious voice. So my book is about the liberal Protestants who dominated the American public sphere from about World War I until the 1960s.And it’s so, it’s a particularly prominent religious community at the time, these were folks who represented maybe a between a quarter and a third of the American population. But their power over American religious life and over American politics was much greater than that because in the middle of the 20th century, if you came from if you were, in charge of something big in American life, if you were an American president a Supreme Court Justice senator corporate executive, odds are you came from the liberal mainline community.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and that’s a really important point to understand is that these people, they were everywhere. They were, in some of their cases, world famous. Certainly nationally famous and yeah, nowadays, pretty much no one knows who they were. And it’s really kind of a stunning thing to contemplate.So let’s maybe talk about who specifically are some of your main figures in the book here?ZUBOVICH: Yeah, yeah. It’s hard to define any group with a religious group with specificity. For liberal Protestants, we talk about Protestants today, we’re talking about over 30,000 different denominations.Liberal Protestants were liberal theologically. They believed in the compatibility between science and religion. They believed in a kind of historical approach to the Bible. And they constituted themselves around the Federal Council of Churches nationally and the World Council of Churches internationally.Most of them came from about 30 different [00:06:00] denominations, the most important of which were the seven sister denominations. These are denominations like the United Methodists, American Baptists, Northern Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and so on. And so these were the major denominations from which people came from.But the book talks about people with kind of funny names. G. Bromley Oxnam, key Methodist leader social gospel and a kind of world traveler. John Foster Dulles, the longtime kind of religious Presbyterian layman before he became Eisenhower’s hawkish Secretary of State. Thelma Stevens, an underappreciated figure who was central to the Civil Rights Movement.So, my cast of characters in this book really revolve around the three things, three political movements that I trace in the book, which is the efforts to diminish racism in the middle of the 20th century, to make the economy more fair and more just, and to get the United States to engage more internationally and to diminish colonialism and the nefarious actions of the American state overseas.So the folks that I discuss are kind of central to those three movements of race, the economy, and foreign relations.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And one figure that I noticed you did not mention, and maybe he’s kind of more out earlier than your timeframe were the Bellamy brothers. (cousins) Maybe if you could talk about who they were for people who don’t know who they were?ZUBOVICH: Sure. Yeah. So, Richard Bellamy is the author of Looking Backwards, a kind of, utopian novel.SHEFFIELD: It’s Edward, I believe.ZUBOVICH: Sorry. Yeah. Excuse me. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Edward Bellamy was the author of Looking Backward, a kind of late 19th century utopian novel, imagining Boston in the year 2000, and the kind of solutions to all the social urban unrest. These guys were social gospel guys. It’s kind of a complicated story, but they probably authored the Pledge of Allegiance or some version thereof.And they [00:08:00] believed in a kind of strong state kind of government intervention in order to better the world. You’re right that my book kind of picks up at the end of World War I and so their most kind of creative moments came in the late 19th and early 20th century. So that kind of Progressive Era, social and gospel era spirit of ambition and reform that continues all the way into the 20th century.So that social gospel heritage of the Bellamys and many other folks who promoted that idea. What’s new after World War I is that the social gospel heritage meets kind of Wilsonian internationalism. So what happens for people like G. Bromley Oxnam as they are influenced by the Bellamys, they’re influenced by the social gospel, but they’re also taking the social gospel internationally, they’re traveling abroad to places like the United Kingdom, Germany, the Soviet Union, and they’re transforming and reforming these inherited ideas and making them a new in the 1920s and 1930s.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it’s important to kind of also think about in that framework is that they were, as you were saying, they were very internationally engaged and they were responding to the scholarship trends like the documentary hypothesis and things like that, that had been emerging in Europe. And you kind of talk about to some degree that they gradually became, I don’t know what, maybe less theologically oriented perhaps? Is that an accurate way of saying it?ZUBOVICH: Yeah. I wouldn’t say that in those exact terms. I think that there’s a lot of theological substance to what liberal Protestants are doing. I think they get knocked for essentially not being orthodox enough. And the people who believe that are the kind of the religious enemies or religious rivals of liberal Protestants.So if you are an Orthodox Catholic [00:10:00] or a conservative evangelical, what liberal Protestants are doing and saying theologically doesn’t make any sense, it just sounds kind of secular, but they had strong, coherent belief systems that just looked different from the kinds of theological systems that, say, evangelicals subscribe to.But it was important to them. What I would say is that professional theologians, that sort of like small sliver of folks who are in seminaries who are talking about Carl Bart and people like that, those don’t feature us prominently. What I found is that anybody but theologians became activists.So social ethicists, missionaries, denominational executives. These were the folks who were really on the front lines of the political initiatives of liberal Protestants in the mid-20th century. So I will say that sort of professional theologians who are not particularly central to the political story, but they did have clear theological commitments and they followed through on them to try to make the world into the kind of place they thought, they were commanded to create, right?They were, they wanted to create the kingdom of God on Earth. And they tried to do that.SHEFFIELD: What I’m saying theological, they’re less interested in sort of the controversies of doctrine or history and more thinking more about values and sort of: ‘We say we believe these things. So, how do we put them into practice?’ Kind of–ZUBOVICH: They’re concerned about lived theology.One of the innovations of liberal Protestantism is they start paying attention to the body as much as the spirit, right? They come to believe that, taking care of people’s bodies is a prerequisite to taking care of their souls. And so for them, making sure that people are fed and clothed and are thriving physically, economically, that’s a necessary part of them thriving spiritually.So, what you see is the work that they’re doing, right? The political work, the activism, the social welfare stuff that they’re [00:12:00] doing, but there is a kind of deeper theological basis for that work that’s maybe not as evident, maybe not as central. They’re not as concerned about, the nitty-gritty debate, theologically debates, but it’s there, nonetheless.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then, so let’s maybe just go to the different organizations that they started creating at this time period. So you mentioned what later became the National Council of Churches. Tell us about that organization and what was the impetus behind it.ZUBOVICH: Yeah. The Federal Council of Churches, which was renamed the National Council of Churches in 1950, the Federal Council of Churches, the predecessor organization, was founded in 1908. It was this kind of social gospel moment. It was a kind of a combination of a kind of a think tank and a political action committee on behalf of mainline Protestant groups.So sometimes it’s kind of, described as a bulldozer. It kind of clears the way for denominations to engage socially and politically. So it came about in 1908 at this moment when there was a lot of enthusiasm for the social gospel and social reform and trying to make the lives of working-class folks better.By World War I, it became really engaged in anti-racist initiatives as well. In the wake of the race riots that took place during World War I, it became engaged on that issue as well, and it really was part of the ecumenical movement. It’s kind of an old-fashioned word, but what ecumenical Protestants thought they were doing was bringing different denominations that had split apart over the course of history for various reasons, Northern Presbyterians and Southern Presbyterians, Northern Methodists and Southern Methodists, all these various kinds of German reformed denominations.Liberal Protestants came to conclude that these were all kind of accidents of history and that Christianity demanded unity. And so this was a kind of theological commandment that they were trying to live out is to bring Christians [00:14:00] across denominational boundaries together.So that began with the Federal Council of Churches, but by the 1930s, they were working to create the World Council of Churches, which was doing the same thing on an international scale, bringing Protestants and Orthodox denominations. Catholics were kind of kept out until the 1960s. They brought together Protestant and Orthodox denominations across national and racial boundaries into some kind of world community and world communion.So that was the goal, was to unite Protestants and other kinds of Christians together, both nationally and internationally. And as they were doing so, they found that, even though they had lots of theological disagreements, the one thing they could mostly agree on is social work, political action, right?It’s the kind of activist stuff that really brought them together.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think it’s important to note and I do want to discuss the Catholic context as well. But you know, during that time period, the United States was overwhelmingly Protestant. I mean, people who live today and don’t really have a knowledge of that, of the religious history of that moment.I mean, it was, what was it, like 75% or something like that, Protestant. Catholicism was obviously there as a minority, but there was nothing else. Like there were no Muslims, there were no “Nones,” as they’re called now, non-religious people. America was overwhelmingly Protestant, and they really did kind of see what they were doing as almost the fulfillment of the Protestant mission that ‘we fixed Christianity and now we’re going to fix the world.’ Something like that, right?ZUBOVICH: I think that’s right. I should point out that, in the United States, there were Muslims in what is now the United States before there were Protestants. And so there were lots of religious minorities present in the United States.But they weren’t recognized in the way that maybe they are today. So even though there was lots of [00:16:00] religious diversity, the key power figures in the United States in, say, the 19th and early 20th century really believed that the United States was essentially a Protestant nation. And okay, you have these kinds of minor groups off to the side, the Catholics being the largest, Jews and maybe Muslims as well. Maybe a couple of Buddhists here and there.But essentially, the United Nations belongs to Protestants. The United States was founded without an established church. But as historians have pointed out, there was a kind of moral establishment, a Protestant moral establishment that kind of acted like an established church for much of the 19th and 20th century.And so in a sense, our Constitution made the United States different from, say, European countries because of that lack of established church. In practice, Protestant denominations essentially ran the show in somewhat similar ways.And so you’re absolutely right to point out the kind of exclusivity and sort of possession of the nation by Protestant elites. This is something today that we talk about Christian nationalists want the United States to become conceived of as a kind of Christian or maybe Protestant nation. We had that in the past. We had that sort of moment where Jews and Catholics were kept out of positions of power and there’s a very ugly side to that history.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And even if it wasn’t official, it was kind of unofficial. And again, the difference with today’s Christian nationalists is that really, they are Christian supremacists and that they want to not just go back to the way things were. They want to make it far more discriminatory against people who disagree with them. And also, more doctrinally to their liking. Whereas before it was just kind of, it was in sort of an ecumenical consensus, if you will, more than anything else.ZUBOVICH: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: So let’s maybe, before we get into the relationship and the ideas of Catholics within this milieu, let’s talk about the [00:18:00] Soviet Revolution because that did also play a role in kind of jumpstarting international Christian politics to some degree. Would you agree with that?ZUBOVICH: Absolutely right. Yeah. The Soviet Union is kind of a part of the way in which liberal politics were structured in the middle of decades of the 20th century. What I was expecting when I began my research was to see the sort of Cold War anti-communist stuff from the very beginning.When I started researching before the religious right, expected that when liberal Protestants thought about the Soviet Union in the twenties and thirties, that they were essentially going to come to the same conclusions as they did in the 1950s, which is, the Soviet Union is evil. It is the kind of the mere opposite of what a Christian nation ought to be.But what I found is that, as they traveled there in, say, 1926, there was this initiative by the wealthy socialist evangelist Sherwood Eddie, who took some of the youngest and brightest minds of ecumenical Protestantism and traveled with them across the world to India and to western Europe, to China, and to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1926 on something called the American Seminar, where these young Protestant leaders who were kind of taking the reins of power in the 1940s were chatting away with Stalin, right? And with Georgy Chicherin, Soviet foreign minister.And they went there with an open mind. I mean, they didn’t like atheism. They didn’t like Marxism, particularly, but they tried to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union in the context of that place and what they found right when they were talking with Chicherin, for example were ideas that ended up changing their minds.So one of the folks that I talk about in the first chapter of my book, G. Bromley Oxnam, who’s the leader in the 1940s of the movement to create the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a really prominent Methodist bishop who’s very close to [00:20:00] presidents when he was traveling in the 1920s, he was really sympathetic to imperialism.He went to India, and he was in India during the Amritsar massacre, where the British put down a kind of rebellion against British colonial rule, and he was sympathetic to the British. He thought that the Indians were getting what they deserved. But when he traveled to the Soviet Union, he spent time reading up on the place and studying the place and trying to understand its history and its people.He came to the conclusion that the Soviet Union was essentially going to get rid of colonialism one day, and Protestants needed to abandon their commitment to supporting European imperialism and American imperialism. And so there is this kind of complicated tangled history between liberal Protestants and the Soviet Union that I found really surprising.I had expected there just to be antagonism, but actually the Soviet Union was a site where Protestants kind of reconceived ideas about their own society and their own place in the world.SHEFFIELD: Well, and then I guess also, and you mentioned the Cold War era ideas about that. So maybe talk about those. What was the change after that?ZUBOVICH: Yeah. Well, with the Cold War, one of the hardest things for liberal Protestants was that they were constantly accused of being sympathetic to the Soviet Union, right? Liberal Protestants were figures who took ideas that arose out of the labor movement, out of the socialist movement, sometimes from the Soviet Union itself and they kind of made it their own and gave it a kind of theological blessing, right? That was one of their functions in American history, to take ideas that seem threatening to the American middle-class public, socialist ideas, and to endow them with the cultural capital of Christianity and to repackage those ideas and to make them safe for consumption by Americans who otherwise wouldn’t engage with these ideas.And so this was hugely [00:22:00] important. And one of the problems is once you do that, when the context of the Cold War arises, when you know people are hunting for reds in the United States, those ideas that you’ve been promoting and in many ways continue to promote all throughout the Cold War, those become suspect and they lead you into trouble.And so what you see by the 1950s is that ideas that had once brought Protestants together in the ecumenical movement are now dividing it apart. You see tensions and divisions emerging during the Cold War, and one of the fault lines is an economic fault line that the liberal Protestant leaders who are promoting socialist ideas in the guise of Christianity, and doing it publicly and sincerely, are now facing resistance not only from communist hunters and politicians, but members of their own rank who now see these ideas as really threatening.SHEFFIELD: It was to some degree kind of a mutual interest as well. I mean, there, there is some evidence that the Soviet Union and the KGB itself was interested in the World Council of Churches and had some individuals that were spies that were inside the organization.You want to talk about that a little bit?ZUBOVICH: Sure. Yeah. I will just say that I did go to the archives in Moscow before the war when these things were accessible and looked at some of the Soviet era files from the government bureaucracy that kept charge of orthodox affairs. I’m a native Russian speaker so I can read these things.And what I found is that there was an interest and the Orthodox, Russian Orthodox Church was sort of used as a foreign policy tool on behalf of the Kremlin. But what they really cared about is Catholics and the Catholic Church in the Vatican. That’s where most of the energy went because there were lots of Catholics living in Warsaw Pact countries and parts of the Soviet Union.So they didn’t see the World Council of Churches and liberal Protestants as particularly threatening and they didn’t use a lot of resources, [00:24:00] but nonetheless, they did eventually send the Russian Orthodox Church to join the World Council of Churches. It took some time in haggling. At first, the World Council of Churches said no, and the Russian Orthodox Church wasn’t particularly interested, but eventually there was a rapprochement between the two and they ended up kind of cooperating and working together on basically anti-racist initiatives.And they found the one area of common ground between liberal Protestants and the Russian Orthodox Church was to call out racism wherever it existed. And so they were trying to focus the attention of the World Council of Churches away from issues like religious liberty, which kind of presented the Soviet Union in a negative light for obvious reasons, and trying to shift the dialogue away from issues of religious liberty to issues of western racism and white supremacy. So there’s a lot of that in the sixties and seventies going on.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And now what about Metropolitan Nikidim? Sorry, I’m probably butchering the pronunciation there. Talk about him. Who is he?ZUBOVICH: Yeah. I don’t write much about him in this book. I’m working on a new book that might mention him a bit more often. He was higher up in the church. I think he was for a while, the kind of, the person who was in charge of kind of, essentially like the church’s foreign policy or, international diplomacy. Kind of a mysterious figure. I couldn’t get much of a sense of who he was as a person from archival information, but probably Soviet specialists know more about him than I do.SHEFFIELD: Well at the very least apparently in the Mitrokhin archive he was listed as a Soviet KGB agent.ZUBOVICH: Yeah. I will say that what it means to be an agent is not as sort of clear as you would think, right?These are just folks oftentimes who agree to cooperate and send reports based on what they’re doing once their trip was done overseas somewhere, it was actually quite common in the United States as well. [00:26:00] Matthew Sutton has a great book called Double Crossed. It’s about American missionaries essentially working as spies, sometimes willingly cooperating.Sometimes a member of the OSS or the CIA would just pose like a journalist and just kind of ‘oh, tell me about your time in China, what was that like?’ and they’d ask them some specific questions. And so I just say that because, on both sides of the divide, right, the iron curtain divide, there was a lot of cooperation between religious figures and state intelligence agencies. But what that cooperation looked like and what it means to be a CIA asset or a KGB agent really could mean very many different things. If that makes sense.SHEFFIELD: Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely it does. And I guess another example of that would be William F. Buckley, the right-wing media impresario. He was apparently had some sort of relationship with CIA during his lifetime for a few years. But to that end, though, I guess, one of the key figures that you talk about quite a bit in the book is John Foster Dulles.I think to the extent that people nowadays know who he was, they know that there’s an airport named after him. But he was just a huge presence in both American and religious and political life. Let’s talk about him for a little bit if we could.ZUBOVICH: Yeah. Yeah. A really interesting guy, of course, Dulles Airport is named after him. He is probably most famous for being Dwight D. Eisenhower’s very hawkish secretary of state. He was a close advisor during the early Cold War to Eisenhower and was a proponent of taking a tough line on the Soviet Union.He was a hawk, and he was a proponent of, oftentimes, using nuclear weapons, which never ended up happening. But in the archive, you could see him again and again, sort of, pushing to use nuclear weapons either as a deterrent or to win this or that conflict.So he’s known as this kind of hawkish guy, which makes his long association with liberal Protestantism all the more [00:28:00] interesting. He grew up in a diplomatic family. His grandfather had been a Secretary of State. His uncle Bert, the Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, also served in that position and took a young John Foster Dulles to Paris in 1918, 1919 when World War I was coming to an end and the Treaty of Paris was being negotiated and the League of Nations being negotiated. So he comes from this pedigree of foreign policy and that’s kind of what he eventually does.But he also comes from a religious family, a Presbyterian family. His grandfather was a longtime missionary, and he himself becomes a prominent layman. And for most of his early life he works as an international lawyer, but he also works as a religious lawyer. He gets involved in the 1920s in these heresy trials.This was a moment when the modernists and the fundamentalists are fighting it out between the two of them over Protestant theology. It’s one of these moments when theology really does matter and it’s at the heart of things. And people like Henry Pitney Van Dusen get put on trial by their denominations because they say, I don’t believe in the virgin birth of Christ, or I don’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. And then there’s this trial that happens where you’re tried for heresy to figure out whether you can remain a minister of good standing in this denomination. And John–SHEFFIELD: And I’m sorry, that is the original cancel culture.ZUBOVICH: Yeah, that’s, that’s a great way of putting it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. The today’s Christian right has literally flipped, flipped the history on its head, that they the far-right Christians, were continuously throughout Christian history been the ones that were interested in censorship and canceling people.ZUBOVICH: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: But I’m sorry, go ahead.ZUBOVICH: No, just to add to that, I mean, the, it’s a perennial question in any religion [00:30:00] including Protestantism, right?How, to what extent can you honestly reassess your faith, your theology, and your values in a community that usually has sort of standards for what orthodoxy means, right? This comes up again and again. In a community like Catholicism, this is easier to figure out, right? There is an authority, right? He’s in the Vatican and he gets ultimate say of what is and is not Catholic theology.Protestantism, it’s much messier, right? There’s no Protestant pope. Even lots of denominations which follow, for example, the congregational model, they, each church essentially gets to decide what theological orthodoxy is for themselves.And so it gets really messy and tricky, right? And there’s lots of innovation and change and flux in these communities that makes it a really interesting group to study. But Dulles is very much on the kind of liberal, modernist side. He believes you can be a good Christian without having to believe in certain forms of miracles or certain kinds of doctrines that other people consider orthodox.And he’s really good at getting these people off the hook. And the people for whom he acts as a lawyer in these heresy trials mostly end up retaining their pulpits. And in this way, the modernists kind of win out over the fundamentalists who split off and create their own institutions.It’ll become really important later on in life. Dulles after this kind of religious work is also an international lawyer. And he’s thinking through the challenges of international order in the 1930s. He’s attending the meetings of the League of Nations, the kind of precursor to the United Nations, which is falling apart in late 1930s and after one of these particularly contentious meetings where the League of Nations tries to stop the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, but can’t do anything about it, he goes to Oxford, England in 1937 from Geneva. And at Oxford, he sees many [00:32:00] people from the same countries cooperating with one another. And this is the conference where the World Council of Churches is being created. And he thinks that there’s something about Christianity that’s especially good at binding people across national boundaries and promoting cooperation.And he thinks to himself, we need more of this in the world. We need religious values to be more prominent in international politics so that there is goodwill and brotherhood promoted, and he thinks that the World Council of Churches is going to do a much better job creating that unity than the League of Nations.And so he essentially gets really close to the churches and all throughout the 1940s, prior to the election of Dwight Eisenhower, he’s working with church groups and he’s working on essentially creating a kind of world government, the thing that becomes the United Nations. This is Dulles’s main project all throughout the 1940s.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And well, and also for him, it’s, I think there, there seemed to have been some real concern that, I mean, he kind of maybe saw himself as sort of betwe in between, like, and wanted to see the World Council of Churches and liberal Protestantism as the reasonable middle between atheistic communism and, Christian fundamentalism. Is that, would you say that’s an accurate assessment?ZUBOVICH: I think that’s right. Yeah. I think lots of people believe this. What’s distinct about John Foster Dulles is, from his point of view, there’s really no difference between a liberal international order premised on Christian values and American values, right?There’s no conflict between creating an international community and spreading American influence throughout the world. These two things are [00:34:00] basically the same project for Dulles. So in the late thirties, 1940s, you could hear him saying, we need a world government that, that’ll essentially be like, the early history of the United States when, the states were sort of coming together slowly but surely and eventually evolved into a kind of, a kind of more serious government structure, right?He wants, he has that vision for the world. He wants like a proper world government. He says things like, we need a new deal for the world. And I think he’s genuine. I never quite figured out Dulles, but I think, he’s really taking seriously the issue of war and conflict and really believes that world government is the thing that.The world needs. And once the Cold War comes and once he figures out, oh actually, right, this world government’s going to involve the Soviet Union is going to involve lots of countries that don’t want to promote American values. And once he sees there’s actually quite a cleavage right between the spread of American, wealth and power and ideas, a kind of true world government. Then he abandons the project and becomes much more of a nationalist. So that, that’s kind of my read on him. This fascinating trajectory where he is really involved in kind of world government debates to becoming a kind of hawkish, nationalistic figure in the Eisenhower administration.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Now what about the idea though, of sort of, I mean, so yeah, the idea of world fellowship or world government, I mean, obviously these are different things. But there was and to go back to Edward Bellamy for him, he, the key kind of the main reason in his book looking backward of why Americans created this sort of socialist utopia was that.For him that they were making the world ready for Jesus to come back to. That’s why they were [00:36:00] doing that. And how much is this sort of eschatological thinking animating liberal Protestantism? And not everybody had it, but some of them did, right?ZUBOVICH: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. So there are two ways of looking at, I mean, broadly speaking, two, two ways of looking at eschatology.And historians often make the distinctions between. Premillennialism and post millennialism. Premillennialism is the idea that, just really, really roughly speaking that the world is going to become a much worse place before the return of Christ. And so if you hold the premillennialist view like many fundamentalists and evangelicals did in the 20th century then you know, you’re not going to invest quite as much in institution building because all of that’s going to fall apart right in the tribulations.And, in, during the rapture most liberal Protestants also had an eschatological view, but they believed that essentially in the post millennialist view that the way in which the second coming is going to be accomplished is that peace by peace, the kingdom of God on earth is going to be built.Built right. So the, the kind of trials and tribulations were, a thing of the past, right. That, you could slowly but surely right. Make the world an increasingly Christian place. Right. An increased place where, harmony is harmony, peace and justice thrive.And after that happens, then Jesus returns, right? And it’s a much a view of eschatology that is much more amenable to, social welfare and racial justice and international engagement in that, in the post-millennial view, those things seem much more important.SHEFFIELD: Well, and so I mean, so how much was that?Animating some of these key figures that we’re talking about here.ZUBOVICH: Huge. Yeah. Hu hugely. Yeah. The idea of the Kingdom of God is, all throughout Protestant literature in back in the social gospel and all throughout the middle decades of the [00:38:00] 20th century, right? The context in which, they’re doing all the very kind of specific things that, that I talk about, if they’re in a, picketing as part of the Civil Rights movement, if they’re, lobbying to get this law changed so that, Whatever, farmers can get social insurance or something like that.They’re doing that within a broader theological context. And those two things are the main two things of that theological context are building the kingdom of God on Earth and Right. The ecumenical movement, bringing Christians across the world together into unity. Right. Those two things were, part and parcel right of the same sort of movement to make the world better, right.In order to bring about the second coming essentially.SHEFFIELD: And yet it was in their political rhetoric, not something that they really did talk about too much. It was something that they kind of said amongst themselves. Is that accurate, would you say?ZUBOVICH: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. There was an internal rhetoric, right, meant for, fellow believers.So if you look at like, the Methodist press and what they’re talking about this stuff would be all over it. But ecumenical Protestants also recognized that they lived in a country and in a world where there were lots of Protestant denominations and didn’t believe the same thing.They were early cooperators with Jews and Catholics and so they recognized that there were lots of Americans, who weren’t. Christians who weren’t even or Protestants, and they recognized that, in the broader world, there were officially atheistic countries. There were predominantly Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist countries.There were lots of different types of people in the world. There was a very diverse world. And so the justifications, right, maybe the motivation for the work that they were doing came from their own specific theological belief, but in a diverse world, you need to justify your actions beyond your [00:40:00] own community.And when speaking to broader communities, they found that they could talk about these, the same ideas, right? In a way that would appeal to people beyond their own specific Protestant denominations. And so one of the languages that they started using was the language of human rights, which for them felt like it was saying much of the same stuff as the Bible was saying as their own religious traditions were saying, but in a way that wasn’t overtly couched in.In specifically Protestant values. And so they came to believe that the language of human rights was one way of, building a more Christian world without making it explicitly Christian, right? Inviting, Jews and Catholics and Muslims, and even atheists to take part in building the kingdom of God on Earth, even if these other groups would do it for their own reasons, right?That didn’t necessarily come from, Protestant theological commitments. So that’s one of the reasons why I highlight the language of human rights in my book, is that I think essentially, it’s a translation of Protestant theology for a broader, more cosmopolitan, more diverse world.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And I guess, well, two things really quick, I guess let’s maybe cover one that you don’t talk about too much in the book is this idea of Judeo-Christian, that this concept was invented, the term was invented in, in your time period here, roughly like the 1920s, 1930s, I believe.And you note that Franklin Roosevelt was one of the people who used that. But so specifically though, why did this term get invented and what did people say before this term? Why did they say it? What did they say instead before?ZUBOVICH: Yeah. For much of American history the United States was conceived of as a Protestant nation and beginning in the [00:42:00] 1930s and accelerating after World War II, more and more public figures started talking about the United States as either a tri-faith nation or a Judeo-Christian nation.So the goal of calling the United States, not a Protestant nation, but a Judeo-Christian nation, was to welcome in Catholics and Jews into the American public sphere. Now there were two ways of doing this.One way was, it was to, it was about increasing pluralism, right? It was about inviting different kinds of religious communities into the public sphere and accepting them and promoting greater tolerance of Catholics and Jews. So there was a kind of more liberal version of Judeo-Christianity.But there were other folks who believed that the focus of Judeo-Christianity would be to find only really religious Catholics and only really religious Jews in order to create a kind of tri-faith alliance to combat atheism. And so in the Judeo-Christian rhetoric, you kind of had a tension within it.There was the increasingly pluralistic attention to diversity strand of that rhetoric, right? Let’s welcome in Catholics and Jews. And there was another strand that talked about really keeping out atheists from the American public, making sure that anybody who’s prominent in American public life is deeply and devoutly religious.So that rhetoric sort of did both of those things at the same time. And the United States, just to kind of conclude the story, started abandoning this rhetoric in the 1960s when it became kind of solely the province of the religious right. So lots of folks on the left thought, okay, the Judeo-Christian moment served its purpose. It welcomed in Catholics and Jews. But now, right, we have all these people coming from Asia and Africa. Many of them are non-Christians, right? They’re Buddhist and Muslims, and the world is a [00:44:00] very diverse place and lots of people actually don’t believe anything at all. So we need new ways of discussing the American nation that’s less religiously specific, and that’s when the religious right really grabs onto the rhetoric of the Judeo-Christian nation. And that’s why today, you only hear about Judeo-Christianity coming out of the Republican party and not, the Democratic Party.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it is notable also though, that I think, within the historiography of religion, Judeo-Christian never really caught on as a term because it’s largely inaccurate in terms of specific doctrines. Christianity and Judaism have extremely different interpretations of many of the key stories in the Hebrew Bible. And so to say that in some limited sense—that they have the same text that they both claim to believe in. That’s true. That exists. But in terms of political history of these two religions they’re really not related to each other. And Judaism has no influence on Christianity after the establishment of Christianity. Not really. Would you agree with that?ZUBOVICH: Yeah. I think that’s more or less right. I mean Jews were one of the, along with liberal Protestants, were one of the communities that was really forceful about this rhetoric. And it served a purpose for them in the 1930s and 1940s when antisemitism was unimaginably popular in the United States. It was common, it was widespread. People talked about it openly and in public. Franklin Roosevelt essentially said that we’re a Protestant nation and Jews and Catholics are here under forbearance. And he said this at an event where there were Jews and Catholics in the room.So people were openly antisemitic and, weren’t particularly shy about expressing these [00:46:00] sentiments. And so it was a— Judeo-Christianity was a strategic move that made sense for Jews and certain kinds of liberal Protestants in the thirties and forties. But by the 1960s when pluralism was sort of more in the air, more rooted, more established, Holocaust memory started rising up then, the differences between these religious communities and the theological distinctions became more prominent once the feeling that antisemitism is going to make a huge comeback, kind of seemed more remote. That’s when in the sixties, right? You’ve kind have more of this theological parsing those that was happening.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. All right. Well, so we’ve talked about Catholics in this conversation a bit here, but let’s maybe focus on them directly, so I think to a large degree, and you talk about it that Catholicism had its own tradition of international order. And it had many centuries of doctrine about the relationship between church and state.And so to some degree the people who were doing this, creating liberal Protestantism, they were doing it as a way in a, in some sense maybe to create something that is a mirror to what the Catholic tradition was. But the Catholic tradition also, up until the Vatican II reforms was very skeptical of democracy and skeptical of separation of church and state.So let’s, I mean, there’s a lot to, there’s a lot in there, I acknowledge. So, let’s maybe just start wherever you want to start with that, and then we’ll continue with the Catholic discussion.ZUBOVICH: Yeah, let me just backtrack to say that the reason why I wrote this book about liberal Protestants, not about Christianity more broadly is because these liberal Protestants in the mid-20th century were essentially the last establishment in the United States, right?Evangelicals and conservative Catholics today wish they [00:48:00] had that kind of cultural power. But they’re just partisan groups among many partisan groups, right? I don’t know if the United States is ever going to have a kind of truly established, religion in the way that mid-century Protestantism was.And so the reason I was interested in this community is because of its, kind of, hegemonic role, right? The last establishment essentially, and their history is really weaved into American history. So is the history of American Catholicism. It’s a really interesting story, a minority faith in a country that is predominantly Protestant, as you had mentioned under siege for much of the 19th century, both in the United States and in Europe.And so over the course of 19th century, Catholicism becomes much more conservative, we could say. Much more anti-republican, anti-liberal more focused on cementing the power and authority of the Vatican because in Europe, ever since the French Revolution, the Catholic church is sort of losing power and influence on the European continent.And there the Vatican looks at the United States with a lot of skepticism. All this stuff about, pluralism, individualism, mobility, right? These are values that look from the perspective of the 19th century Vatican’s point of view as antithetical to Catholicism. And so they are they essentially condemn what they view as quote unquote Americanism.All these liberal values that are being promoted in the United States. But that’s not to say that Catholics are just following along the lines of the Vatican. There are lots of folks in the United States, both clergy and especially in the laity. Who essentially acculturate to American political norms and start thinking of themselves as essentially both good Americans and good Catholics. And they don’t see a conflict between the two, but on the Vatican’s line[00:50:00] essentially is the predominant one until the reforms of Vatican II in the 1960s.And so for much of the period that I discussed in my book, right, Catholics essentially position themselves as a kind of conservative alternative and a set of institutions that are alternative to the kind of mainstream liberal Protestant project.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And this is definitely beyond the scope of your book, but the Catholic church’s response to the Adolf Hitler regime, kind of does, I think, well let’s maybe talk about that a little bit in sort of the aftermath of that.ZUBOVICH: Yeah. The I mean, it’s an extremely controversial and complicated nuanced subject. We’re getting more and more information about it now that the Vatican archives from this era opened. And so there’s much more nuanced takes on what, Pius XII was trying to achieve.And there’s a lot of debate among historians, and I’m not an expert on this stuff, so I’ll leave it to them to sort it out. But what you could see from the American vantage point is that most, the vast majority of American Catholics to take another example–Catholic institutions, I should say–when they were looking at the Civil War in Spain and the ascendancy of Franco in during the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, almost every single one came down on the side of Franco. And so, Catholic institutions were not afraid to side with fascist or proto fascist forces in Europe in the 1930s.I think the only magazine that didn’t take Franco’s side is Commonweal Magazine, which is sort of today known as a liberal journal. They had a debate about it. They weren’t sure kind of which side they wanted to take. But I think every other Catholic publication in the thirties took Franco’s side.And so, this was a community whose [00:52:00] elites, whose clergy were very much, had a very complicated and distant relationship from liberalism. These were not promoters of liberal values. They had kind of their own project that they were that they were promoting, which wasn’t fascist, I should say that clearly. But could sort of sway between liberalism and fascism as the winds turn essentially.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, and I think that’s an important point to make though, because especially for 21st century Americans and people who are not, may not be religious themselves, there’s this tendency to label everything that is reactionary or far-right as fascism. And that there may be some commonalities with that with the historic term, things that were called fascism. But the reality is that these are ideas that are a lot older than Benito Mussolini, and Franco, and Adolph Hitler. So you have to understand that if you’re going to try to counter it, I believe.ZUBOVICH: There’s a certain kind of conservatism by which I don’t mean like, libertarian economics, right? Or like William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan. I mean, like a rootedness in tradition that Catholic institutions are really good at promoting. Evangelicals are not particularly good at this, partly because I think they’ve, really like imbibed the spirit of American individualism and freedom and libertarian economics.But Catholics are really good institution builders. And, their elites are really good at kind of reproducing, right? Like a really rooted conservatism. And so, in, in some way, I think that the history of Catholic institution in the United States, one of the most important roles they serve is being a kind of bastion of conservatism.One that oftentimes is not favored or, one that doesn’t, have a lot of sympathy from the laity. [00:54:00] Most churchgoers, most Catholic churchgoers in the United States today are to the left on many issues when compared to, say the Catholic Bishop’s Council or something like that.So I should make it clear that I’m not talking about all Catholics, right. But there is a way in which, you know Catholic institutions and Catholic elites are create the institutional setting that can kind of reproduce generation upon generation of, conservative values in the kind of Burkeian sense of conservatism in a way that other religious groups are not particularly good at doing.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and actually to that end the. The, this liberal protestant establishment that we’re talking about here, it also failed to reproduce. And, and we’ve talked about how that they, in the political sense they were able to create things that, that lived after they, they themselves, like DOIs and these other people, Truman and FDR, I think you could say were in this group that, they were able to create international and national institutions that, that outlived them.But in terms of their, theological influence or their congregational influence, that just drastically declined since then. And let’s talk about why you believe that happened and some of the key moments for that.ZUBOVICH: Yeah. So when you say, they fail to reproduce themselves, I mean, I think you’re right in a certain sense, but we have to ask,SHEFFIELD: I mean Yeah, they’re still there, obviously, so Yeah.It’s just that their dominance has not been preserved religiously.ZUBOVICH: Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Part of the kind of reproduction of what question has to do with– like part of my objection to that would be, oh, they still constitute 13% of the American population. They’re still really important and producing presidents, or near presidents. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama come out of this tradition. Groups like the UCC, the United Church of Christ is really important in the Black Lives Matter movement.And I can give examples of the ways in which they are prominent. [00:56:00] But the other way I think in the liberal Protestants continue to be prominent in the United States is not through their churches and demographics, but through the values they promoted. The language of human rights is still here with us.Even though the community that, helped promote this language has shrunk quite a bit. And so I do think that they’re better at reproducing their values, ideas, and politics and worse at reproducing their institutions and churches. Liberal ecumenical Protestants were at their height in the 1950s and 1960s, and they got involved in a number of politically controversial movements.We talked about the Cold War in which, you know, and the ways in which the Cold War kind of, made the kind of left-leaning folks in this community kind of come under attack. That was sort of one, one example of this. They were, closely aligned with the Civil Rights movement, which again, especially within their own community, was very unpopular.They took a stand early on against the Vietnam War, right. And as they were doing all this stuff, taking clear stances on politically controversial issues that put them out of touch with the vast majority of churchgoers, right? There were consequences to this. On the one hand, there were lots of young people in these liberal Protestant churches who took these ideas seriously, right?Anti-war activism, anti-poverty activism, anti-racist activism. And they started practicing these things. And what they oftentimes found is that they could express those ideas and those values better in non-religious institutions compared with, their home churches, right? And so one of the things that starts happening in the 1960s is that young folks start leaving liberal ecumenical churches.Some of them return, but many don’t. [00:58:00] Many choose to live out their theological values in contexts outside of the church, right? Outside of the community in which they grew up. So that’s one thing that starts happening. The other thing is you get this kind of rebellion of the laity conservatives who are continuing to attend these churches start withholding funds and donations leading to kind of financial crises. They’re the ones that stick around as the young people are leaving.And so liberal mainline churches in some ways kind of become more conservative after the sixties as they start shrinking, they start shrinking and aging. But the majority of mainline quote unquote denominations in the most recent elections, I think the majority of them voted for Donald Trump, not Joe Biden even though the leadership of these communities is, kind of in the Democratic camp for the most part.So essentially, the dynamics set forth by the political commitments that liberal ecumenical Protestants make in the mid-20th century, on the one hand, promote these values beyond the church community while also leading to the shrinking and aging of their denomination.So it’s a complicated legacy, right? And how you feel about this legacy really has to do with what you think is more important, right? Is the more important legacy that these churches are shrinking, that fewer and fewer people are remaining committed Christians. Is that the important thing?Are you bothered by the fact that many of these folks are becoming Nones, N-O-N-E-S. Not nuns. People who don’t affiliate with any religious tradition. Is that the most important legacy?Or is the more important legacy, the kind of promotion of social justice and liberal values in the public sphere? In the human rights movement, in the anti-racist movements and the laws and regulations that, help poor folks. If that’s where you think the real commitment of Christianity lies, then you’re likely to take a more positive view. So [01:00:00] it’s really a perspectival question, right? Like, which of these two things do you think is of greater value? What do you find more important?SHEFFIELD: Hmm, yeah. Well, and what is kind of interesting is that while the growth in the None has definitely happened in–we have seen a decline in so-called mainline denominations.Historically, what is kind of interesting is that the mainline in the very recent years actually has seen a slight uptick depending on the survey that you’re looking at. And that probably is, and it seems to be, at least in part, that there is some dissatisfaction among younger evangelicals with the tradition that they have.And so that tradition has seen a large drop off because and that’s what it’s kind of interesting looking at that in terms of affiliations that for the longest time that, in the nineties and early two thousands, the evangelicals and the more fundamentalist Christians were, they were crowing about how they were the only ones who were going to be left in Christianity and now the Southern Baptist Convention, for instance, has had massively declining numbers year after year, after year.ZUBOVICH: Yep. About 20 years ago, you would’ve heard a lot of talk about how secularization theory is a bunch of bunk, that the people who predicted that the United States was going to become secular were really just focused on liberal Protestants. But here are these, thriving megachurches and thriving evangelical communities that are actually doing quite well.And so that would’ve been the position you would’ve heard about 20 years ago. But from our own vantage point today, it’s becoming much clearer that the evangelical community didn’t avoid secularization, they delayed it.Essentially, they got an extra 20, 30 years, something along those lines. But groups like the Southern Baptists and the others are experiencing what the mainline [01:02:00] experienced beginning in the 1960s. It was just delayed.To your point about liberal Protestants, one of the ways in which they kind of sustained themselves and sustained their numbers, say in the thirties or forties, if you were, upwardly mobile in the United States and you grew up as a Pentecostal or one of the Methodist sects or something like that, and you were kind of upwardly mobile, at some point you might switch from a more fundamentalist or evangelical church to a mainline one as you kind of rose through the ranks of society as you kind of raised your cultural or class status.By the sixties, what happened was that the evangelical movement created a kind of politics of respectability for evangelical denominations. And so you could be, by the seventies, eighties, nineties, a good Christian businessman or a politician without having to change your affiliation, right? You can kind of remain with your own denominational tradition even as you were upwardly mobile.And so the evangelical movement was really good after World War II in creating a space where people can be upwardly mobile and respectable without needing to become members of mainline churches. And this essentially cut off one of the sources that was kind of replenishing the numbers of mainline Protestantism and is one of the reasons why we get this kind of a shrinking of the mainline.So what you’re describing more recently, maybe a slight uptick in the numbers of folks who are switching from evangelical to mainline churches, if that is in fact happening, actually seems to sort of follow a historical pattern. Interestingly enough, it kind of hearkens back to a phenomenon that had existed earlier.SHEFFIELD: And we’ll see to what extent that continues, if it does or not. But it is, I mean, it is notable also though that a lot of that seems like almost all the growth when you look at demographic studies on religious switching, that people who were joining [01:04:00] these more fundamentalist denominations, they were not non-Christians.They, that they were basically sort of cannibalizing the other Christians. And now that those groups themselves have had their own secularization and disaffiliation that’s kind of eaten away a lot of their numbers, there’s not really any pool of people to draw on for the fundamentalist denominations anymore.So now things may be going back in the opposite direction as people who were born and raised in a fundamentalist tradition are saying, ‘Oh, I don’t think I believe this stuff is literally true. And I see these other people don’t believe that either. So maybe I’ll go talk to them.’ZUBOVICH: Yeah, it, I know it sounds like we’re getting really into the weeds here, but there’s a really important broader point about this that, this kind of like stuff about denominations and denominational switching. I think really points to one of the big themes that I try to highlight in my book, which is that in order to understand the religious landscape today, you have to go back and understand the history of liberal Protestantism.And I think that’s because a lot of the rise of the Christian Right and Evangelicalism happens in the context of their rivalry with the Religious Left. It’s essentially an intramural religious rivalry. By the seventies, evangelicals are essentially saying, we’re out to combat atheism and secularism, we’re rebelling against the secular state.But what I think is a better description of what they’re doing is they’re fighting back against religious liberal values, right? Not secular values, but a specific version of Christianity that they, that they’re dismissive of and dislike.I think in order to understand what’s going on today, you really have to look at the history of this kind of intra religious rivalry between liberal Protestants and conservative Protestants.SHEFFIELD: Oh, yes, absolutely.And I guess maybe let’s do, this has been a great [01:06:00] conversation but let’s maybe end with that you talk about as part of sort of the difficulties that the liberal Protestant establishment had and sort of perpetuating itself from a sectarian standpoint, you talked quite a bit about this idea of a clergy-laity gap as something that began to grow larger and larger over time. What did you mean by that?ZUBOVICH: Yeah, the clergy-laity gap is one of the central dynamics that I think helps explain the decline of liberal Protestantism and the kind of numerical terms and the creation of a religious vacuum into which the evangelicals and the Christian right steps into essentially.The liberal Protestant leadership, all these ministers and denominational executives, missionary heads, theologians, and others are promoting increasingly liberal values all throughout the mid-20th century on topics that are controversial and unpopular, right?Diminishing racism lessening poverty and economic inequality. Providing an alternative framework to the Cold War to create a more sort of peaceful, less confrontational world. These are all things that in the pews of the churches among churchgoers are deeply unpopular.And what you have emerging over time, and I think this has a really long history, but in the middle of the 20th century, especially by the Cold War, you really see the clergy-laity gap developed into a chasm, right? That the ministers and the people in the pews really don’t agree politically, right?And so what happens is that you get this sort of divide between the liberal clergy and the more conservative church going public that I think is at the heart of the story of the decline of the mainline and the ascendancy of more conservative religious [01:08:00] values.The liberal Protestant ministers, and especially the national leadership, are asking people in small towns and villages and big cities across the country to really reckon with human rights, anti-racism anti-war protesting, things like that.And church goers just don’t want to hear it. They’re deeply resistant to it. And it’s this kind of fracturing this community that essentially undermines the leadership and allows for evangelicals to kind of step in to say, our values are more in line with yours to the laity. Our version of Christianity, the kind of Billy Graham version of Christianity that doesn’t really ask you to change your mind or your values about the world.It’s essentially a version of Christianity that is telling you that what you grew up with is good enough. What you believe is what the Bible says. The Bible is not telling you to go protest the Vietnam War. It’s telling you actually the opposite. It’s telling you what you already think about the Vietnam War, just to take one example. And so, the clergy-laity gap is, I think, a central dynamic to the decline of liberal Protestantism and the ascendancy of evangelical religion in the United States.SHEFFIELD: All right. Well, there’s so many other things we could talk about here today, but I don’t want to make the conversation too long here for the audience. But it’s been a great discussion. Let me just put up the book on the screen again.So we’ve been talking today with Gene Zubovich. He is the author of Before the Religious Right, Liberal Protestants, Human Rights, and the Polarization of the United States. It’s definitely worth checking out. I recommend everybody do that. And then of course, you are on Twitter as well. And that is I’ll hop to spell it for the listeners since you’ve got your fine Russian name there. So Gene Z-U-B-O-V-I-C-H [01:10:00]. It’s been a pleasure talking with you today.ZUBOVICH: Thanks so much. It has been lots of fun.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that’s it for this program. Thanks for watching, listening or reading, and if you’re interested in more discussion about the religious left and the religious right. I recommend checking out Episode 62 of this program where I talked with historian David Hollinger about the rise of American fundamentalism and its integration into right-wing Republicanism.And as always, if you like what we’re doing here, you can go to theoryofchange.show, where you can get full access to every single episode with video, audio, and transcript. And I do appreciate everybody who is a subscriber of the show. Thank you very much for your support. I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary  The United States is the world’s most obese major nation, but it’s also the homebase for most of the global health and fitness industry. These two seemingly contradictory facts intersect in a number of ways in our popular culture, but they also are related to our political culture as well: Donald Trump’s obesity is one of his most famous attributes, but at the same time, his cabinet officials like Robert F. Kennedy Junior and Sean Duffy have become memes for saying that they’re going to install pull-up bars in America’s airports to encourage fitness. The fact that Kennedy, a former Democratic presidential candidate, is even serving within a Republican political administration is another example of this juxtaposition at work.All of this may seem like blatant hypocrisy or craven opportunism—which it surely is—but there are some larger trends at work here as well, and they point to a deep and often ignored fact that bodies and fitness have always been politicized, especially in regards to what people consider to be “natural.”There’s a lot to talk about here, which is why I wanted to bring back a friend of the show, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, she’s a professor of history at The New School, and also the author of Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, which is a historical look at how fitness and wellness cultures emerged within the country, and what it means for our politics.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Fitness has always been political (Natalia’s first TOC appearance)--How a silly video of women dancing to a rap song caused a nationwide Republican freak-out--How MAGA is becoming a sexual fetish--Marianne Williamson’s ineffective self-help politics--The hidden history of gay Republicans and the far right’s worship of the male body--Why tradwife baking videos are actually fetish contentAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction09:03 — Robert Kennedy Junior and the “naturalistic fallacy”13:43 — Opposing unhealthy food additives is still a good idea, even if Kennedy backs it16:19 — Glenn Beck’s moralizing AI George Washington 23:47 — The irony of Donald Trump’s party talking about fitness and the natural27:29 — “Mar-a-Lago face” and weight-loss drugs33:36 — Vaccine fears and Trump’s boasts about Covid immunizations38:08 — Politics of emotion and media environment42:41 — Gender norms and workplace dynamics48:20 — Body positivity versus health advocacyAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: So a lot has happened since our previous conversation, needless to say, and I have to say, your work is just becoming increasingly relevant. You you nailed all this stuff, Natalia.NATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA: Thanks!SHEFFIELD: And probably when you started people were like, what the hell are you doing? Am I wrong to say that?PETRZELA: Oh, you are right to say that. Although it’s that sort of doubtful thing where you’re happy your work is relevant, but also it suggests some pretty disturbing things going on in our political culture. But yeah, to put it in a nutshell, when I first work at, started working on fitness culture as a historian of political culture, and I was like, these things are connected actually.People were like, oh no, you’re making all of these kind of farfetched things, fitness is just the body or just the gym. And now we can’t turn anywhere without there being this sort of like very political use of fitness in the body. So I guess I’m glad I was right to make those connections, but also it’s too bad for our republic.SHEFFIELD: yeah. Yeah. Well, no, exactly. And so, but if you could just give us a. For people who missed the first discussion or [00:04:00] haven’t bought your book yet just give us a little recap. I want to give, you a chance to plug it right in the beginning here.PETRZELA: Yeah, thanks for the yet on, haven’t bought your book yet. So my book is called Fit Nation, the Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession. And essentially what it does is it charts the history of the idea that exercise is good for you, and that we should all be exercising more. That’s actually a relatively recent idea in American history, and as it shows that intellectual history, to a point of consensus, which is actually surprising today. Like I always say, we disagree on everything in America, but we all kind of agree exercise is good for you and that we should be exercising more. Despite that consensus, only 20% of Americans actually exercise regularly. And so this book tells the story about the emergence of that consensus, but also it’s the unequal participation or actualization of it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and trying to increase the participation that is, seems to be one of the biggest initiatives of RFK Junior as people may have seen recently, he was showed up in the airport and attempted to do some pull-ups. Did, they didn’t go very well for him.PETRZELA: Yeah. Yeah, the pull up police was really commenting on his form and lack of extension. I do have to say for he’s 71 years old, right? The fact that he can get even three quarters or half pull ups are not, are, is not terrible. But I think the bigger import, of course, of that initiative is that people were very frustrated because there’s so many problems with, forget fitness, with our transportation infrastructure. And the idea that the response of this re administration is, oh, we’re, upgrading airports by putting in pull-up bars. That, that feels really just surface and really cosmetic. and also very finger wagging. Like, oh, what would need, what needs to happen to make your travel experience better?You need to, be doing more pull-ups. And so that just feels, I [00:06:00] think, incomplete on a lot of levels. I will say for any of you listeners who go out and dig through my social media, I actually think having pull up bars and other exercise in a airport is not a terrible idea. Like I’m all for it. I would love to be able to be a little bit more active and to have that free, especially when so many perks and airports are now, in luxury lounges.But the idea that this is a federal priority especially at the expense of others, I get it. That is not great.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it isn’t. And, but it, is really illustrative of their overall approach though, in that they see everything in terms of, personal moral feelings by the public. And, in that regard just, and just pack it into this particular context, the Trump administration when they, when he first became president, one of the first things that he did with regard to airline travel was to remove regulations that the Biden administration had put in that required airlines to pay customers whose flights they had delayed for no reason, no mechanical or weather related reason, just for monetarily reasons, because they thought, well, this flight doesn’t have enough people, so we’re going to delay it.That’s so, like, that’s an immediate thing that Trump did to make airline travel much worse. And then also, of course, he’s come after air traffic controllers. But according to them, the reason air travel is bad is because you are not doing pull-ups in the airport.PETRZELA: Right. No, I absolutely, I am a hundred percent on board with those critiques. I mean, it is so crazy. It’s so individualizing, it’s so condescending, honestly. And I think that’s indicative of something much larger, as you say, with this administration of constantly blaming the victim, and particularly with RFK Junior in this position of kind of suggesting that like individual bodily management technologies, I guess, are the answer. What is so frustrating to me is that exercise actually is so good for you. So many more [00:08:00] Americans should be exercising. We should have the federal government be on board with making this an urgent national priority. By the way, that is what Michelle Obama was trying to do. Right?SHEFFIELD: I was going to say that, yeah.PETRZELA: Like I guess we’re going to get there. I mean, Trump administration I, wanted nothing to do with any of this stuff. But I just find it so frustrating that the way that this administration is framing like a very positive promotion of exercise, which I’m always going to be on board with, but it’s all about you’re lazy. Like let’s compete with each other. And like I say, most importantly, to the exclusion of actual things that would probably make your travel better or actual things more relevantly that would make your health better. Right? Like regulation on healthy food, like food stamps, like all kinds of federal programs that are being cut back, like vaccines, by the way, that are being cut back that actually damage our health.And so the idea that you’re being encouraged to go do pushups, even though I’m all about pushups by the federal government when they’re taking away these critical things, is really insulting.Robert Kennedy Junior and the “naturalistic fallacy”SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it really is. At the same time. And I guess one of the things that has happened, obviously Trump won since the last time we talked on the show. One of the other things that did happen is that RFK Jr had, formally transitioned to from being a, sort of a, I guess we’ll say a granola left winger asterisk. We’ll put an asterisk on there for everybody. But, as a nominal, as an, as a identified Democrat to becoming a member of the Trump cabinet.Now I would say, and we did ki we touched about this in the general sense that this was inevitable. That this was going to happen, that he would join up with them.So, and a lot of that has to do with the idea of what is natural, I think and that the naturalistic fallacy is the common thing that he, didn’t change his thinking.PETRZELA: right. right. I’ve always said that, I mean, I think, a lot of what’s at play is the unique opportunism of RFK [00:10:00] Junior, and that’s maybe, we can talk about that specifically. But I think in terms of my work, the thing that’s more interesting about that is the kind of ideological and philosophical and political flexibility and malleability of wellness culture, exercise culture, writ large. And I think this notion of the natural that you point out is a very good example of that.I mean, RFK Jr comes out of a world in the sixties and seventies where resisting chemicals, resisting pollution, resisting like Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Food, was very much a left wing consideration.Right? This was about back to the land, about naturalness, about resisting big business in a lot of ways, right? Now we have seen that discourse really migrate to the right with him being like a key figure in that, that now you see that kind of same invocation of the natural in some ways being targeted at the same places, right?Big Pharma remains very much a target. Big Food remains very much a target, but I think being invoked. Have a very backwards looking, kind of championing of the natural order of things.The, part of that I pay most attention to, which I think is a very powerful part of it, is around gender in particular, right? Men are supposed to be this way. Women are supposed to be this way. It’s. Physically, biologically encoded. It’s natural for a man and a woman to be together, for a man to be stronger and a woman to be, cooking the whole trad wife thing as part of this as well. And so I see, you see that kind of malleability of wellness culture, and particularly this idea of the natural migrating, at least in our discourse, much more from the left to the right.SHEFFIELD: Exactly, and, and, it has to do with the fact that, these people who may have kind of had their origins in, left on the, on, in, in opposing corporate factory farming or, chemicals and food or whatnot, they didn’t actually understand the broader liberal [00:12:00] context.They, were only purely about the natural. You know that, which is really the naturalistic fallacy, which, and I’m going to just read from, Edmund Burke. and this is why I think, there, there’s just gravitational pull of, conservative and reactionary party. So in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, he wrote that: “In all societies consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. And the levelers, [i.e. people who want equality,] therefore only change and pervert the natural order of things.”And so, if, naturalism becomes the thing that’s your priority, then you’re going to be gravitationally attracted toward right wing politics. I think that’s what we’re talking about.PETRZELA: I think at its essence that’s true. and I, that’s a helpful quote from Burke. I say that though while try, like, as an intellectual, I say that, but then as a citizen living in the world and trying to raise a healthy family and like live a long time and have healthy joints. It’s hard sometimes to disaggregate these specific policy positions.I don’t want red dye 40 in all my kids’ food. I think ultra processed foods are a scourge, I really do on our society, and so I know that’s not exactly what you’re asking, but I do think in terms of your listenership and being an informed citizenry trying to act responsibly, it’s really important to keep these intellectual trajectories top of mind before you go whole hog into whatever you’re going whole hog into, while also realizing each policy issue might involve some sort of, I don’t know, accommodation’s the wrong word, but kind of thinking pragmatically, I guess.Opposing unhealthy food additives is still a good idea, even if Kenney backs itSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I, am glad you said that because this, me saying that the naturalistic fallacy is bad doesn’t mean I want people, to, have all kinds of franken foods and what. Not like I’m, that’s not what I’m saying.PETRZELA: No, I know you’re not. Yeah. You, are far too [00:14:00] sophisticated for such things. But like, for example, something that I’ve seen is like, when this thing about the dyes was in the news, it was like a few months ago and there were people being like, I don’t care about the dyes. Like, vaccine policies, the real problem.And I’m like, of course, I would rather have my children have access to vaccines, than not have artificial diets in their foods. But guess what? Not having those dyes is also a good thing. So I think that there’s something hard there. That’s very much where I am with the pull up bars in the airports, more exercise equipment in airports.That’s great. We should be able to say that. That’s great. But we should also be able to point out these much larger issues, both with the administration and as you’re saying, the kind of logical extension of some of these ideas when you think about them as ideas.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, when you look outside of the United States, they don’t allow these chemicals additives in food either. So, and they also have vaccines as well. So like, we can, like more than one thing. It’s okay.PETRZELA: Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. It’s very, I don’t know if it’s peculiar to American politics, but we do like to gravitate towards the extreme view of everything it seems.SHEFFIELD: Well, it’s, and I think that’s, it’s a function of negative partisanship. So if, somebody who has a lot of really stupid ideas picks up an idea that is actually one of ours, we can still like that idea.PETRZELA: Right. Right, right. It does not pollute it at its core. That’s a very good point.SHEFFIELD: But at the same time, it is still important to understand that the, reason why we are in favor of vaccines and the reason why we don’t like potentially carcinogenic food additives it isn’t because they’re unnatural because. the entire point of human society is unnatural.Like everything we do is like, the fact that we’re talking right now on, over the internet on video is unnatural. if the a, if the natural is, all that you should do, then you should go and live like an Amish person. That’s what you should do if you really believe that. So you have to, dial that back and, prioritize where [00:16:00] does that fit in and, over. And, overall having a good society, that’s gotta be, the what the ultimate objective is. Not pursuing whatever is natural because you’re going to go nuts.PETRZELA: Also, the natural environment is full of dangers and poisons and harmful things that, I don’t think we would like to let run free. So I agree.Glenn Beck’s AI George WashingtonSHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. And then just kind of backing the, topic even further out here, there is this, idea not just the naturalistic fallacy, but also the, when you look at, pretty much all right-wing politics devolves to moralism and moralizing, and this is why they’re so attracted to, these fundamentalist religions is that they believe everything is a moral failure, failing if you all problems ultimately devolve back to that.And I think. Glen Beck recently, I think he illustrated this so perfectly with this absolutely bizarre AI video that he made. so, so he, just for the, audience, Glen Beck, he is obsessed with the founding fathers of America, and he thinks that. All modern day political problems can be solved by directly using their ideas, which of course is absurd because, we have so many things that didn’t exist when they were there.And they themselves did not sanctify their own beliefs. So, but nonetheless he, so he, obsessively collects documents from the founding period. And then, so he’s, put them all into an AI model, custom AI model that he made. Which he claims does not hallucinate, which is actually totally ludicrous. Not true, not possible actually.But nonetheless, and then he made an AI character that is, he calls it George ai. And I’m just going to play the clip here for the audience so they can see what this is. It’s so bizarre. And basically it’s all about if things that are bad in society, they are your fault.(Begin video)Glenn Beck: George, we have programmed [00:18:00] a lot of information and given you a lot of information on what’s going on in today’s America. based on your writings and the writings of the rest of the founders, what is it that you feel is the biggest problem or where we should start to fix things?George AI: If I may speak plainly, my countryman, the danger, the greatest danger to our republic lies not in foreign arms or political faction, but in the--Glenn Beck: May just interrupt you for a second? Could you just dumb it down just a little bit?George AI: Okay. I do have 29 points, and they’re all referenced to exactly what we said in the past for this.Glenn Beck: Just speak in today’s language.George AI: Okay. Okay. I get it.Let me speak to Americans. If I’m honest, America’s biggest problem isn’t political or economic. it’s all moral. You’ve drifted from the virtues that make liberty possible in the first place. Freedom, to be free, you have to have discipline, you have to have faith, you have to have character. And if you don’t have any of those things, laws, can’t stop anything, and they mean little. Government turns either weak or oppressive.You have grown skeptical of truth. You’re reckless with debt. You’re comfortable, blaming instead of building anything. And in my time, we understood that self-governance begins with self-control. Do you even recognize what self-control is?Public virtue matters more than public opinion. You keep electing these people, expecting things to change, but you haven’t changed. The fix is not going to be found in Washington DC. It’s going to be found in every home, every school, every heart. Where are the citizens who value duty [00:20:00] over comfort, principle over popularity.America was built to be a moral and self-governing nation. It’s only that foundation that will still save her.(End video)PETRZELA: Yeah. Wow. That was really something else. I have to say that, yeah, exactly as you framed it is right that this AI version of George Washington really breaks everything down in modern society to a problem of individual failing, right? Of the failing of individual moral virtue. And I mean, it doesn’t surprise me because I think that’s a pretty facile reading, but a kind of intuitive one of some of the framers’ early documents--SHEFFIELD: It’s natural!PETRZELA: Yeah, exactly. It’s totally natural. And also there is this like just constant sense to like look backwards with this nostalgia that like, this was a more moral time. These guys were upstanding figures in a way we can’t even imagine. Meanwhile, we know these were deeply imperfect men, right? In ways that we would consider even almost as disqualifying today, qualify today, qualify. I think in terms of the exercise piece, it makes perfect sense that a romanticized vision of what’s wrong with America as being a failure of moral virtue. Well, what’s the solution, to pull-ups in airports or work out more? I mean, that is. I think understandably exercising, working on your body, disciplining the flesh if you will, that is like an instant way that anybody can literally perform their own moral virtue, right?I am improving my body. I am enduring pain in service of getting better, being better. What is more American than that?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, yeah, and, of course it’s just not enough and, but this, romanticized, bodily idea that, I mean, it, it does also. it’s, always been there. And you were telling me before the recording about the, this idea of making the founders buff in, in statuary. Tell us about that.PETRZELA: Yeah, so what’s interesting is that you can read Ben Franklin and he talks about going for brisk walks and getting [00:22:00] your blood flowing. So there is this kind of early idea that exercise is good and moral for you, but these guys were not exercising in any way that we would consider exercise today.In fact, for many years after that exer rigorous exercise for many years after that vigorous exercise is considered quite dangerous, and the statues early on of the founding fathers, kind of show bodies that reflect that their bodies are kind of nothing special in terms of what you might see at the gym.When I was studying--.SHEFFIELD: Dad bods.PETRZELA: Yeah. Dad bod. I guess founding dad bod, founding father bod. Right.When I was doing the research for Fit Nation, though, something that I learned is that Charles Atlas, who was this famous fitness figure in the early 20th century, that one of the things that he did was he would sit for sculptors who were actually remaking bodies of the founding fathers in statuary to look more like Charles Atlas, who by the way was called like the “most perfectly developed man.” He had his rippling six pack and actually in Washington Square Park, the Washington that is there now, George Washington actually looks like he’s been hitting any one of 20 gyms in that neighborhood before being rendered in bronze there.And that is not the way they looked. But you can see, I think that’s a really interesting moment because you see how this civic virtue or political virtue starts being really knitted together with the idea of an apparently physically fit body. It’s like right there when you see a statue of Washington and an idealized image of him, and I think that the, whether it’s the Trumps, or by the way, plenty of Democratic politicians have kind of leaned into this stuff as well, but as you see, I think that is an interesting origin point or one origin point to see the way that physical bodily virtue gets transmuted or equated with civic and political virtue as well.The irony of Donald Trump’s party talking about fitness and the naturalSHEFFIELD: It does. Yeah. And, there, of course there is a real irony in that this is Donald Trump’s party that is doing this. Like a guy who is is famously obese [00:24:00] and also actually hate exercise and has that viewpoint that you were saying that thinks that exercise is bad for you. This is his party that’s doing this.PETRZELA: I mean, this was the talk of the first Trump administration. I remember I wrote a piece, it was one of the earliest pieces in the Made by History vertical at WA and the Washington Post that talked about how Trump’s distaste for even digust for exercise was a complete outlier on for the Democratic and the Republican Party, like at least since i’d say Kennedy, but you could even date it before that, at least since Kennedy, you had both politicians on left and right kind of going, showing themselves jogging or lifting weights or at the gym or whatever as a sign of their fitness for presidency, for political life. The fact that they’re kind of relatable, we all need to go gym.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, they’re disciplined.PETRZELA: I mean, Donald Trump at that point and kind of still, but very vocally then represented something completely different. He talked about how he embraces this 19th century theory that you’re born with a finite amount of energy and then you can, you use it up. And so who are all my idiot friends? I think he said doing triathlons, like that’s just going to use up your energy.He was ordering steaks and double scoops of ice cream and just kind of, and said that my exercise is just giving speeches. Right. And really they cut Michelle Obama’s nutrition package that was under Let’s Move. It was big government, the nanny state, right? I want my big gulp soda. And I think that is very interesting, because he was both invoking this like, older version of kind of like morally dissipated, I think luxury, right? Like the fat cat, right? How do you show that you’re affluent and on top you have abundance?Most of the rest of society had moved on at that point. Like really rich guys are going and wearing like the newest technical gear and they look like they just did a triathlon. He really felt out of step with that. But I think to me, a lot of that had to do specifically with distinguishing himself and like really condemning [00:26:00] the Obamas since they were known as like the fittest, president, the fitness people in the Oval Office and Michelle Obama in particular.Nutrition and fitness policy was a big piece of her at First Lady package platform.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and that tension, it never gets debated on that side or resolved in any way. And like, and, they don’t even discuss it. They just kind of put his views in a box and don’t talk about them.PETRZELA: Yeah, I think that’s right, but I also think that it makes sense that the particular version of like White House fitness culture that’s being promoted right now is what it is. Because, there’s not like, it’s all guys, first of all, it’s all guys like showing their big muscles doing pull up contests. Like you really don’t see women involved with this whatsoever.I mean, and which is interesting to me because the Trump administration has also made a huge deal about how they’re the real defenders of, women’s sports, of course, right? Like this is. against trans people for the most part, you would think at that big unveil of the pull-up bar, wouldn’t they have a woman there doing pull-ups as well?Like, and so I think the only way that these things kind of square is that they’re part of the same kind of like macho posturing, which has always been Trump, although these guys are taking it to the gym. But, Yeah, it’s a version of fitness culture, which is so different from a Michelle Obama’s version of it.I think that’s on purpose and I think it’s the only way that the Trump I administration really does kind of cohere with the Trump II. Yeah.“Mar-a-Lago face” and weight-loss drugsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, the other kind of interesting juxtaposition of these two views also is that. Despite having this obsession with the naturalistic fallacy, which Trump also has, in his own way. They also, there’s two trends in MAGA land that are at the top that are very notable.One is. The obsession with plastic surgery and heavy makeup for women, and that is in the news as we’re recording this with, this week with, Vanity Fair [00:28:00] did a photo shoot, an article about some of the top White House staff members and the photographer who always does this, he didn’t touch up the photos or alter them, and he, posted them in full close ups and, what people noticed from these photos is that Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press secretary, uses lip injections. Which, oh no, that’s unnatural. Shouldn’t do it! But Mar-a-Lago face is a thing.And then the other thing that they’re big on is weight loss drugs, which God, you talk about experimental, potentially dangerous things for people. I couldn’t think of, that’s one of the most dangerous things to deploy at scale for, in my opinion as a national policy. Jesus. I mean, these two things are completely contradictory at the natural,PETRZELA: well, there’s so much there. I mean, I think absolutely the Mar-a-Lago phase, which is so clearly a plastic surgery induced look. Yeah. It’s completely at odds with any idea of what’s natural. And I think really shows how much the notion of natural gender norms or gender appearance is totally romanticized like these are.Interventions that look fake to anybody who knows anything, but also are meant to almost like create the ideal version of like what a woman should look like, right? Like large breasts, big lips, like the blonde hair, all the rest. the Ozempic piece, I, or the GLP one piece I think is, like. I have resisted being really conclusive about it.Yeah. There’s no doubt about it. It’s not natural, but there’s so many competing discourses about that because Yeah, on the one hand, I mean, I agree, like it seems alarming to release something like that as scale, that people have to stay on forever. Right. And that we don’t really know what the outcome is going to be. So that I do think--SHEFFIELD: They’re so new.PETRZELA: On the other hand, given how many illnesses in our country are correlated, if not caused, to excessive weight, and how hard it is to lose that weight for many people and how expensive those drugs have been, [00:30:00] I actually am sympathetic to the idea of making them more accessible.Although I have no doubt they’re all going to be used in like terrible ways, like advance, like the worst of America. But but I think that’s complicated and like, it, there’s a lot going on there, let’s say.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, and, but, and it, the, weight loss drug, it illustrates another contradiction of this ideology because, on the one hand they say that they’re saying, well, we have to get these drugs out to people. And the government has an interest in health and providing it as a federally subsidized thing, but we’re also against subsidies for Medicaid.PETRZELA: Oh, totally. We’re also, again, yeah, I think that’s really important. I thought you were going to say something else that, I’m not sure what RFK Junior’s saying about it now, but early on there was a tension in this MAGA coalition, an understandable or predictable one between him and the Trump administration where RFK was kind of anti getting behind these GLP ones and using this kind of Washingtonian or Glen Beck’s version about personal virtue of like, oh, this is the easy way out.You just eat well and exercise like you’re going to improve your body. a very kind of traditional way of thinking about that Trump, very differently, ‘I’m going to be the one that gets the fat shot to the masses,’ right? And I’m not sure exactly where they are in that debate, but there, I think also you see that ideological tension between like the advocate for the natural and like the hard way of doing it versus the, I have no ideology except wanting to be adored and I don’t know, hating fat people.I mean, I think that’s more the Trump side of it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, I think in his case, likes the idea of giving people things that will make them like him.PETRZELA: Right,SHEFFIELD: and so like, that’s why he has, talked about do doing tariff rebates, even though they haven’t really brought in that much money, But of course it doesn’t, it has no ideological coherence at all. Because you really want to have people like you, then you should give them healthcare and [00:32:00] have, them be healthy in a lot of ways. Not just not be obese. But they don’t, but they don’t think that far. and I think that’s, one of the, ultimately, if that’s the, final layer of all of this, this, their epistemic posture, which is my personal sort of reactions to things, that’s what’s true. Not anything else.Like my, so my immediate reaction to, well I don’t like somebody because they’re, because I think they’re fat or I don’t like someone because I think they’re, they, that they’re L-G-B-T-Q because they’re unnatural. But on the other hand, I’d love plastic surgery on, on, the women in my life.Like, these don’t make any sense. but they do make sense. Only if that’s your posture, which is my immediate reaction is real.PETRZELA: Right. Well, the normative, it’s like a normative kind of naturalness, right? Natural by the standards and that I de to be appropriate. I mean, if you go back to the kind of like 1970s like hippie version of the natural stuff, just to stay with the like body image kind of conversation. I mean, those are the women who are saying, I’m not shaving my armpits and my legs.I’m going to wear no bra. I’m going to let my tummy hang out if that’s what I have. That is not the version of the natural that the Trump world is getting on board with. And so I think, yeah, I think that like to the extent that we can point out those inconsistencies, I think that is really, that is like really shows the lie.The danger of embracing natural as a worldview or a kind of a guiding philosophy.Vaccine fears and Trump’s boasts about Covid immunizationsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then one of the other contradictions in this political coalition is about the, about vaccines, which we touched on just a bit. But you know, like, people are now talking, as Trump’s in his, coming up to his second year of his term, and he can’t be on the ballot again.And so, people are starting to think of him as a, [00:34:00] lame duck, especially considering all the elections that they’ve lost and how he’s got his lowest approval ratings ever. so people are now looking to kind of defy him or, reject his ideas sometimes even in his own party.But when we look at it, I think. It’s, I think it’s accurate to say that, the, COVID vaccine was the first time when he got people challenging him from within the party, and, it’s related to this, I think.PETRZELA: Oh, I definitely think so. I mean, isn’t it amazing to think back to operation warp speed and the fact that he was so proud to be getting the vaccine out and then to fast forward, not even that long, not till today, so, but to like, I don’t know, what was it, a year even at.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.PETRZELA: Yeah, within a year. And to see the way that the Feds giving you or forcing you to get vaccines was seen as like the problem with the left, And I think that’s been really interesting to see. And also to see him kind of walk away from that win. Like I think as we were saying before, like Trump’s ideology is personal victory, right? And so that was considered a huge win at that point. But now, like you would never hear that. Never hear him talk about it.And yeah, I think in terms of the natural conversation, I mean that’s always been I think a huge and dangerous problem with the kind of natural living crowd has been their resistance to vaccines, which of course long predates RFK Junior. But that was really fringe. And then it came into the national spotlight.And, I don’t know if, and it’s not it, was focused on the COVID vaccine, but we’ve seen the downstream effects that like parents aren’t getting their kids’ measles vaccines or, flu shots and that is having real, impact. And I will say. I blame, I mean, I blame everybody, but, I definitely think this is obviously a problem with the Trump coalition and the way they weaponized all this and have sent us in this anti-public health, moment.But I also think some of the [00:36:00] moralizing from the left around COVID protections, vaccines and otherwise did not do any favors, for the American public. And we saw Reasonable resistance to some of the made up measures like oh, six feet apart, or, a bunch of other cloth masks, no cloth max masks.And you better do it or you’re a bad person. We saw, I think, some reasonable critique to that metastasize into this complete condemnation and rejection of so much basic public health knowledge that we need to stay alive and healthy. I mean, I’m terrified of what’s going to happen the next time we have a public health emergency and we have like a really hollowed out C, D, C, they didn’t handle it perfectly last time, but at least there was a, they there.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great point. And, even with Trump and vaccines though he’s, he had a comp, he’s had a complicated or like multifarous viewpoint about them. because originally before COVID and before he was the president, he was actually stating publicly. He thought that vaccines caused autism.And then, once he became president and could put his gold star on or operation warp speed, then he did. and he still pro COVID vaccine, although he doesn’t talk about it and he says, you guys won’t let me talk about it when he does rallies. So like, again, it’s just this. I, ultimately I, that’s one of the points that I guess I try to make a lot to people is to understand that the reason none of this, the, these right wing viewpoints make any sense is, or that there’s so much hypocrisy and contradiction, is that they don’t actually believe in coherent logic.They just believe how something makes me feel in a given moment. That’s what’s true.PETRZELA: Yeah, it’s a total politics of emotion. And by the way, I think this is connected to illiteracy crisis, to polarization, to our like rapid fire, quick take, media environment as well. Like there’s just this immediacy and an emotionalism to all of it that really infects, [00:38:00] our politics. And I think that’s like in many ways I feel like the right doesn’t even try to resist that. I think the left is a little better at resisting it, but we see this across the political spectrum, I thinkPolitics of emotion and media environmentSHEFFIELD: and then, as, it, looking into the politics of, gender, as this manifests as well. I, think a lot of that I is why we’re seeing just this massive growth of misogynistic podcasters on the right wing. That, pretty much, I mean, it looks like at this point, all, relatively new right wing figures are men.and if and, they’re openly misogynist and, even fascistic but even the women are that way too. Like theyPETRZELA: Oh, I was say don’t sleep on Erica Kirk and Candace Owens and some of these other ladies. I mean, there are plenty of women out there who are doing this bidding, right? And I think like, well it’s important to realize, like, and I think it’s really interesting to think about like, what do women gain from this?Like, I want to understand, it’s so inimical to me to hear Erica Kirk saying like, women who move to cities are relying on the government as their husband. I’m like, what are you talking about? You? I’m sure you heard that that clip maybe, but what are you talking about? But then I am thinking like, what women who listen to this and agree with it, and there are a lot of them presumably must be getting something out of this.And I don’t know, I kind of default to an old feminist studies take, I guess, which is sort of like in a patriarchal society, there’s a lot to gain from attaching yourself to patriarchy, right? And to playing by those rules. You’ll never, you’re never going to be on top, but it’s maybe better for than being cast out by for it and I by it.And I think that kind of speaks to a lot of what we’re talking about. Like, yeah, it sucks to be getting lip injections and transforming your face and your hair and looking a particular way and all that. and that’s something that is almost uniquely visited upon women or at least much, bigger.But do you stand more to gain in our society by looking a [00:40:00] particular way than by rejecting it all and potentially being cast out? I cannot blame a lot of women for making that calculation, and I think that it’s easy to be like, oh, there are just, they’re so pathetic or whatever. But I think lots of us probably do that in smaller ways, in worlds that we live in that don’t overtly adhere to those politics at all.But I think, I mean talk to any group of women about like their experiences in the workplace, they’ll tell you even they’re not working at right wing think tanks and you got treated really differently if your hair’s not done or you don’t look pretty or you’re overweight. And I know men that face this as well, but it’s much easier to, there’s just new, I know I’m going off a little bit, but there’s new data that shows that like, women who put themselves together at work, nails, hair or whatever, actually make more money.And I think, and in a bigger differential than men who do that. And that’s not a political survey, but I think it speaks to the way some of these ideas, course through our whole culture. So sorry for the little rant on that, but I do think it’s to think about because it’s really in our face with Mar-a-Lago face, but it’s much bigger than that.SHEFFIELD: Well it is. and, and I think that’s also just going back to these, right wing, misogynist podcasters like Andrew Tate or some of these other guys that you know, really in a lot of ways. So, so as legalized discrimination of, or overt patriarchal discrimination has become largely illegal, although of course they want to bring it back.But as it’s become, you can’t get away with it, doing it so overtly as it used to be. that’s really kind of forced kind of a reckoning or a rearrangement of. The idea of societal heterosexuality, and a lot of people are really kind of resisting that I think in a lot of ways. So in this and, these patriarchal norms.That both, that, that really have, been inculcated in people from birth [00:42:00] and just from decades of, societal acculturation, things like, well, women have to, it’s better for a woman to stay at home. It’s better for a woman to not date a man who makes less than her. It’s better for a man to, to never apologize. So like all of these norms that actually are not ne, that they’re not political in themselves, but they really have, still permeated the culture and. They make it so that a lot of people who do present socially as heterosexual, they’re very dissatisfied with it, but they don’t understand why that these are systemic issues and they’re not personal ones.Gender norms and workplace dynamicsPETRZELA: right. Yeah. No, That did make sense. But I think getting back to these right wing male podcasters and what they’re tapping into, I think that you’re right that as a lot of this stuff has become less legal right, or socially acceptable to say at like the office for example, those guys really tap into this sense of like, here’s where you can say what you really think, right?Or like, forget all those HR rules and like whatever you learned in your social sciences class in college or that DEI training you had to sit through. Now you can be yourselves and we can like have real talk over here. And I think that, and often implicit in that is like things have gone too far in the other direction.We guys are like coming to like reclaim, right? And what I find interesting about that, and I’ve been in actual rooms like this, is that like, I’m like, well, how far have things really gone? Like this room that I was in was a group of men who work on Wall Street and they were all complaining that dEI has gone too far.They weren’t talking about women, because that would’ve been weird because that was a woman in the room. Right? I mean, it was already kind of a strange conversation, but as they were complaining about this and honestly raising some legitimate complaints about some of these programs, I’m like, but it’s too far really the problem because look at this room, you guys are like still the titans of industry, right?It was a pretty ethnically homogeneous place. A [00:44:00] homogeneous group. And I think that like that notion that things have gone too far and we’re the minority voice speaking truth to power, and we’re taking it back is fundamentally wrong because look at where the power still resides,SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and also like, I think maybe one of the most immediate senses of that is it is workplace flirtation or approach. because like, I think basically what Me Too, the aftermath of it exposed is that. lot of men have no ability to contact women outside of their job and they don’t know how to and then at the same time, a lot of women are, have no ability to approach a man, and they then, they don’t know what to do about that.And so like. So if you’ve created so in a system which has been reconfigured in which people are left alone at the workplace, which is good, like we should leave people, let people do their fucking job. But it’s, uncomfortable and people have to figure out how to adjust to that. And I think in a lot of ways some people are resisting that because it’s harder, it’s different. It’s not what they’rePETRZELA: It is harder and it’s harder to diversify the workplace and have to deal with people who isn’t like your buddy’s friend or who went to the school like you or who’s a woman. Right. It’s hard though. I mean, I think that it’s been an incredible, it’s been incredible progress. The sexual harassment, like legal structure, which has been developed over the last 40, 50 years and now is being unmade in a lot of ways. It’s huge and positive. I do think, and by the way, as someone who met her husband at work in a very male environment, that the, some of it is enacted in a little bit of a ham fisted way, in part because Americans spend so much time at work, right?That like. I am frustrated that sometimes some of the justified backlash of what can feel like paternalistic policies gets, again, to use the word again, metastasize into resistance to very sound policies about people with different power differentials. Like not being able to date at work or be either being [00:46:00] like real reporting structures for people who are harassed at work.And so. It’s, hard to fix this, but there’s been really great progress. And then some of the backlash really like takes away, it’s a baby in the bath water situation in a lot of ways.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And, yeah, there’s no quick answer to that and we’re certainly not going to solve this issue on, on, on a single podcast. but it’s, I, guess what I’m trying to say is that, it’s, there are legitimate concerns that people have on these, on, with regard to this stuff and, discomforts and, things to learn.And I think that’s an area where the broader left has to do better at acknowledging that people. Don’t know how to navigate this new world in some ways, and, and, that’s true with regard to health and fitness and wellness and all that as well. Like these are, people have the right to have concerns about things that they don’t understand.PETRZELA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean to get back to that point before about health and fitness and its political malleability, one of the things that I find so sad and potentially tragic is that when you have these right wingers claiming the fitness space as their own, you risk alienating so many people from an activity that should be universalist and should be appealing to all. Because it’s about literally our fundamental ability to live well. And so when I see, some of this stuff online of like, oh, why is the like workout to, right wing pipeline so obvious, or the Venn diagram is a perfect circle between like a MAGA guy and like a ripped guy. And I’m like, no, it should not be this way. And I think sometimes the left leans into it.I mean, it was when the presidential fitness test was going to be put back in schools. This is just like a few months ago. And there are some issues with that for sure, but I think generally PE policy from the top is good and creates some standards. But one of the reactions was all of these like liberal journalists and online people who were like the presidential fitness test. Let me try to do it.I can’t even do one pushup, like, pull, the sit [00:48:00] ups are for MAGA people. And I was like, oh my God. Like this is not the right critique here. Right? We should be owning this space and claiming physical fitness as a kind of universal human right. And and that, and just naming it that, not letting it be claimed. So yeah, I found that a very annoying reaction.Body positivity versus health advocacySHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it’s tricky because, you don’t want to shame people for their body. That’s, and that because that’s wrong. But at the same time, it is still a fact that if you are excessively overweight that’s bad for your health. And you should want to try to do something about that, but you should never be made to feel bad about it.and it’s tricky. Like this is, these are, conflicting pulls of reality and, but, it’s okay to, pursue both of them. I think, we canPETRZELA: there is there We can have two ideas. I hope we can. I think in this podcast we’ve had at least like 10 ideas out there. But there are people who say you shouldn’t, like, it is not anyone’s business to tell anybody that they should want to be healthier. Like that is a very kind of hegemonic way of approaching individuals and don’t tell them how to use their bodies, et cetera.I think that critique is overstated. I think that yes, we should not be telling people exactly how they should look or how they should. Much they should weigh, et cetera. But I think creating a culture where people are encouraged to pursue their own health and to move more and to provide more access to different ways to do that really should be a top priority.Like that is not a MAGA thing or a political thing. That should just be a thing of a good society.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And yet it also is true that, for some people with different body structures that they might appear to be, overweight, quote unquote, but they’re not and they’re just fine. So it’s an, it isn’t, the, your business of how a individual person that’s not close to you or that’s not your [00:50:00] family member, it’s not your business what they, what their health is.But as a society, it’s, we can, shoot for a, better median, if you will.PETRZELA: Yeah. And I think a big thing, and this is of course through our conversation here, that the Trump White House is really many, in many ways knitting together aesthetics with health. And that is not. Accurate. Just like you said, there are many people who don’t look like they could be a fitness model, but they’re out there doing triathlons or whatever.and so I think that we should resist that connection that is very e hard to resist when you’re being bombarded with visual imagery all the time, and whether it’s explicitly making that connection or not.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and one way that, that society can move toward a, better fitness median is to have more walkable cities. And, push for policies that encouraged trains and, walking and vice, and cycling, but these are also what Republicans resist.So it’s like you guys say you want fitter people and make them exercise more.Well, the easiest thing for anyone to do who can walk, is to walk and to, incentivize them through the, your civil society structures to do that. And that’s not there’s, and that’s a great thing. That’s nothing to apologize for.PETRZELA: All right. A lot of these are presumably public works projects, right? Better lit streets, safe streets, parks, recreation, facilities, housing that is inexpensive enough that you’re not driving two hours each way to work, and then you have no time to do any of this kind of thing. Yeah. A lot of that is public policy that goes beyond pull up bars in airports to say the least.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Absolutely. All right, well, is there anything on all of this that you, feel like we got, we need to hit a bit more, or do you think wePETRZELA: I think we kind of got it. I mean, I could go on forever about this. It’s been, it’s fun. The book came out a while ago, so it’s nice to come back to talk about this.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. Cool. All right, well, so if people want to keep up with the stuff you are doing, Natalia, what, is your advice for that?PETRZELA: These days I’m most on Instagram at Natalia [00:52:00] Petra, but you can find me on LinkedIn, occasionally Blue Sky and threads as well.SHEFFIELD: All right, sounds good. Glad to have you back. Okay.PETRZELA: Nice to be here. That was fun.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation. And if you want to get more, you can go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And if you want to stay in touch, you can subscribe on either free or paid option, just go to patreon.com.Slash Discover Flex and you can go to Flex, do Community if you want to subscribe on Substack. And if you can do a page subscription, that would be super helpful. And you get unlimited access to all the archives and my very much. And I very much appreciate your support if you can do that. And if you’re watching on YouTube, please do click the like and subscribe button for so you can get notified whenever there’s a new episode.Okay, well that’ll do it and I will see you next time. This is a public episode. 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Episode Summary This episode is a bit different than usual because it’s a collaboration that I did with my friends at Liberal Currents on their podcast, Half the Answer, about my book, What Republicans Know, which is, as you may already realize, about what Democrats fail to understand about politics, and how Republican consultants and politicians have a much better grasp of things.As it happens, our conversation is incredibly relevant this week after the new Republic’s Greg Sargent reported that the Democratic National Committee is refusing to release to the public an autopsy report that it commissioned about what went wrong in the 2024 presidential election.That’s a huge mistake since millions of people want to see the party acknowledge its failures, so that political leaders can be held accountable now and in the future.My personal expectation is that this outrageous decision will be reversed once enough people realize what’s happened. In the meantime, though, I hope you’ll enjoy the autopsy that Caitlyn Green, Trent Nelson, and I conducted.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Why Democratic establishment consultants aren’t doing political science--Democrats failed to create an advocacy ecosystem, and Kamala Harris suffered for it--As Republicans have radicalized, Democrats have become more passive--Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them--Politics has changed drastically since the advent of social media, Democrats have not--Flashback: Trump’s big bet on low-engagement Americans--The science of why the ‘poorly educated’ prefer RepublicansAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction08:47 — Democrats are actually funding right-wing media through ineffective TV advertising15:40 — Republican recruitment tactics and Democratic gate-keeping19:38 — Public opinion is malleable, but Democratic strategists don’t realize this27:08 — The undead ‘triangulation’ strategy of Bill Clinton is behind many contemporary Democratic messaging failures35:19 — The filibuster and governance obstruction38:06 — You can’t run from your positions, so you should learn to argue for them40:10 — How liberals can speak more effectively in favor of trans rights43:10 — Democrats failed to include pro-Gaza voices, and it did matter45:41 — Republicans love funding unprofitable media, Democrats hate it50:00 — Thermostatic public opinion and why Democrats have to actually present strong affirmative cases53:04 — Trump’s somatic politics worked very well for less-informed voters01:03:53 — Kamala Harris’s positions were more popular, but it wasn’t enough01:12:00 — Trump’s much more effective pop-culture media appearance strategies01:24:38 — Howard Dean was right, you have to meet voters01:30:02 — Progressive vision and community valuesAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.TRENT R. NELSON: Well, happy days are here again. And understanding a question is half of an answer. And this is of course half the answer. Your host, Trent R. Nelson, and Caitlin M. Green. And, well, I’m a historian, philosopher—I write, I edit, I do a whole bunch of stuff. I talk to you guys every week it seems. And we have Caitlin as well. And she also talks, [00:02:00] she’s a mom, she’s a linguist, she’s a writer, she’s an editor. She’s a guest getter. Watch out. She’s everywhere. You might even see her overseas.CAITLIN M. GREEN: And an amateur doll maker. Right now I’ve made three dolls that are all terrible and I’m going to be making a fourth one, and maybe that one will be less terrible. We’ll see.NELSON: Piano player, she’s everywhere. It’s a lot. Well, Caitlin every single week, whether it’s once, twice, or thrice, we’re having fun chatting with wonderful folks.We’re learning so much, hard to schedule, so much learning, but we manage. Who are we learning with today and what are we talking about, Caitlin?GREEN: Oh, Trent, we’re getting a peek behind enemy lines today. I have brought with me, Matthew Sheffield, who is a former media and campaign consultant for the Republican Party, and who is now using his knowledge for good.He is the host of the Theory of Change podcast, author of what Republicans Know and his work has been in Vanity Fair, Washington Post, and The Daily Beast and more. We are so excited to welcome you, Matt. How are you today?MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Hey, good to be here. It is a sunny day finally in Southern California where I live.GREEN: So yes. A sunny day. Yes, it’s a cloudy day in Portland. How’s your weather, Trent?NELSON: It is cloudy, but we don’t mind. it is sunny. It’s cloudy. We manage either way. Matt, it’s such a pleasure to have you behind enemy lines. Well, we’d love to get into your story as well, but we know you have a wonderful offering for us today.GREEN: Yeah. You’ve been working hard, right? Yeah. Tell us about your project.SHEFFIELD: Sure. Yeah. Well, so What Republicans Know is basically the culmination of years of, so I worked in the Republican world of things for about 15 years, [00:04:00] as a blogger, as a consultant, as an editor, entrepreneur, project manager, website and campaign person.And basically, after I switched sides, and we can get into that later, what I realized was that the left does not understand just how much these Republican consultants have figured out. The consultants who work for Democratic candidates, or further left candidates, whatever your stripe might be, they don’t really understand how politics works. They have this kind of antiquated worldview.And so I wanted to put down in a book to let people know what exactly Republicans are knowing. Because, I think as everybody who, as you guys certainly know, the policy positions of the Republican party are not popular. And, but they still manage to win elections a lot.And so that is one of the things that I set out to explore in the book, and explain how are they doing this? How can they win elections despite the fact that everyone hates their ideas?GREEN: Right. So there’s been a lot of conversation online in the last couple of days actually, between people whose position is, well, they keep winning because of cheating, because of things like gerrymandering and vote suppression.And these kind of like technical things that could be fixed by procedural means versus people who say like, actually there are human people that are attracted. To the candidates of these, of this party and that they are being won over by messaging not just that, like they’re outnumbered by people whose votes are being suppressed.And so where do you fall on that conversation?SHEFFIELD: Well, so what I usually say to people is that most criticisms of the Democrats are correct. I think that there’s a problem that people who might have more centrist [00:06:00] inclinations or people who might have more democratic socialist inclinations, they think that only their critiques are correct.But the reality is that most of the things that people say are wrong with the Democrats actually are true. And I’ll give you an example from each side of the debate on that. So like Republicans obviously are using gerrymandering to win elections and whatnot, but the reality is they cannot gerrymander Senate seats.And so the Republicans have-- well, I, let me step back first to say that, so the Republican Party as presently constituted, is not a conservative party. It’s a reactionary party.GREEN: Right.SHEFFIELD: And it’s important for people on the left to make that distinction, because not only is it accurate for historical reasons, but it’s also so you can use those, that, that division between conservative and reactionary for divisive purposes, which you must do.And so the, when the reactionaries took over the Republican party they basically did it by tricking conservatives who disagreed with them into feeling like: ’Oh, if you don’t vote for us, you’re going to die! Hillary Clinton is literally going to murder you!’Like it’s, this is not an exaggeration when I say that, but they have multiple podcasters going out there, and saying that Republicans will be hunted if Hillary Clinton won the election, which of course is ludicrous and stupid.But if you don’t know a lot about politics, then you might just a little bit think that maybe that might possibly be true. So gerrymandering is important, but it’s not the only thing.And then, with regard to various other isms that the Republican right uses to manipulate people. They use all of them. They don’t just use one. Like that’s one of the things that I want to make sure that people understand as a takeaway from this, is that they use racism, they use sexism, they use [00:08:00] poverty hatred. They, they, they use all of these things, and, and they use religious bigotry.So they have many tools in their toolbox and we have to recognize what they are.NELSON: Yeah. And again, I think, Matt, what you just said in the beginning, we talk about it all the time, seemingly here, each and every episode. It seems as though we get back to the fact that Republicans are better at staying on message and hammering home messages.And the people respond to that and they don’t respond to what they perceive to be the wishy washyness of the Democratic party. What is the remedy for for a party that seems to, to not message well and to lack a spine to some degree?Democrats are actually funding right-wing media through ineffective TV advertisingSHEFFIELD: Well, I think ultimately the, the most effective things that’s going to have to happen is that, so the Republican Party is, there’s a real split between the political professionals and the ideologues.And people who have strong ideologies on the left have to make a similar distinction within the party. Because if you, if you want the party to do the right thing, you have to make them terrified of you. That’s really what it comes down to. And so, we have to build power and build our own ecosystems. And so like, stop giving money to the Atlantic.Stop giving money to the New York Times. Stop paying these mainstream institutions that, that have no interest or belief in what we do. Right? And so don’t, don’t give them your subscription money, like use archive.is to bypass their paywalls. You can do that. And, uh that’s, that’s, we, we, we’ve got to start funding people who actually agree with us.And that’s one of the central points in the book because like the Democratic party literally funds right wing media. And I’ve got a graph of, of how it works. [00:10:00] Basically, Kamala Harris and her Super pacs. They actually had more money than Donald Trump and his Super pacs, including when you factor in Elon Musk dumping that money in the, in Pennsylvania and, Wisconsin.But they wasted it on TV ads. Because TV ads-- so here, here’s this interesting paradox is that political scientists the, the, the right wingers are, are correct about this one thing, which is that academia is predominantly, comprised of people who lean leftward. And that’s certainly true with regard to political science.But the really sad thing is that, that we’ve got a ton of amazing and learned political scientists, and nobody listens to them in the Democratic Party. they were, the party is dominated by these consultants who they don’t actually know very much about political science. They know almost nothing about cognitive psychology.And so they’ve got this idea in their head, well, we’ll just run a lot of TV ads, but political science has shown for decades now that in presidential races they don’t do almost anything. And so Kamala Harris spent almost the entire Trump campaign budget just on TV ads, and then she had more money on top of that.And here’s the thing that’s even more outrageous, is that because of these right-wing companies like Sinclair or Nexstar, or Rupert Murdoch’s, Fox, the Democratic Party has literally been paying for right wing media over a billion dollars over the decades. That’s fucking up.GREEN: Okay. This is something that I wanted to really get into because, one of your kind of tenets or one of your like, main points in this, in, in What Republicans Know is about, [00:12:00] you know, buying TV ads on Sinclair stations, on Fox News stations, on on, on all of these, kind of, these entities that are owned by extreme right wing people is simply just putting money into their wallets that they will then use to create more propaganda against you.And that, I think, coupled with your point that TV ads are simply not that effective, means that it’s like only lost no gain. Is that what you’re saying?SHEFFIELD: Yeah, basically, I mean, they, they, they get a small, tiny, tiny amount of gain from these ads. You know, and, and they’re, they are more effective excuse me, they are more effective in like local races because most people don’t know who the candidates are.But at the presidential level, this is Pepsi versus Coke. So yeah, if you see an ad, if you’re a Pepsi drinker and you see a Coke ad, you’re not going to drink Coke. You, you’re just not, because it’s not persuasive to you. And so, Pepsi guy, you know. That’s right. And so the same thing, that’s how it is in the presidential campaign. So essentially, yeah, the, the money that the, the Democratic campaigns and they send a thousand of these Trent, will you help us? We’re about to die here. I need your help there. Need your $5. Even though I have a billion in the bank,NELSON: The text messages, the emails, do something, do something first. I’ll give you $5 later. Right? Like, do something for us. NoGREEN: help. I’m dying. Help. I’m so weak. Trent, your $5 will bring me back from the brink.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, yeah. And so basically so they have all this money and then they are renting media assets instead of buying and owning and developing them. And, and that’s really true with regard to, these, these newer ones that have come along as, as the popularity of YouTube really skyrocketed.It’s by far the number one website on the internet now. [00:14:00] And we’ve got you’ve got TikTok and and podcasts these are, and these are all things that, that people are turning to, especially younger people. The, the left is not there.GREEN: Larry Ellison wants TikTok. He would like to own it, and that means it’s another oneSHEFFIELD: Yeah.GREEN: In, in the right wing bucket.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And he just bought CBS and so and put Barry Weiss in there. So, they are, are really going out there to, to fund and buy up as much media as they can and mm-hmm. You know, this is not something that, I, again, like these consultants tend to be either extremely old, like James Carville is one of these people.I mean, like, why would you ask for advice from a guy who hasn’t won a, a presidential campaign since 1996? What the hell does this guy know? Nothing.GREEN: No, that’s right.SHEFFIELD: he’s irrelevant. And the interesting thing also is that the Republican party, so, and I can say this because I was, there rubbing shoulders with these people.Like they were, they had the same problem of these defunct consultants dominating the party. When you look at the campaigns of McCain or, or, Mitt Romney but when Trump came in, they hated Trump because they thought he was a liberal. And so they hated him, and he hated them in return, and so he kicked them out of the party and brought in new blood, new voices, new ideas, and they’re just wiping the floor with the establishment Democrats, who don’t know what’s going on.Republican recruitment tactics and Democratic gatekeepingGREEN: Yeah. I would say the Democrats have a reputation for rejecting new voices, right? And for keeping people out and for just like slowly just aging without like bringing in the new generation, right? Whereas there’s all these organizations on the right that [00:16:00] are explicitly designed. It feels like to sort of vet young people, train them up and find them places of influence in every direction, right?Like the Federalist Society for the Judicial, the turning point USA for like these sort of influencer crew, young Republicans, Young Americans for freedom. Like all these groups that are for like college age and even younger. There’s like T-P-U-S-A high school. So scary. Anyway, that’s a whole other thing.It’s like developing these really young voices and putting them in sort of these mentorship relationships that, that helps keep the messaging fresh and helps keep fresh faces. Because one of the things you point out is whatever the message is, your messenger is really important.Like, whose actual mouth hole is this coming out of does matter. James Carville is not going to cut it.SHEFFIELD: No, no. And I’ll give you an example of just how dire the situation is in that regard or the imbalance. So I have a friend who, runs an anonymous Twitter account that mostly posts about basketball, and he occasionally likes to troll politicians in his local area just for his amusement because they’re dummies.and, and, these are nonpartisan elections though in his area. And he got contacted by a Republican consultant in his area asking him, Hey, you do good stuff. How can I help you?GREEN: Wow.SHEFFIELD: So then truly are to an anonymous full account. Yeah, yeah, yeah. With like less than 3000 followers. Yes.GREEN: So they, they just saw like, Hey, you’re giving some people a hard time who happen to be Democrats.How about I help help you do more of that? Give them more of a hard time. That’s, yeah.SHEFFIELD: That, that is exactly what they do. And this fits into a, a larger issue, which is that on the right, they’re, they will take you in for any [00:18:00] reason, as long as you agree with them.Yeah. Like, they don’t care what your motive is. You don’t care what your background is, just as long as you agree with them. And whereas on the, and you know, and, and I’ll say I, I personally have experienced that people even though I have been out of the right for more than I, I, I left about, about, yeah, more than 10 years ago.And I still get people saying to me, despite the fact that if you look me up for even five seconds, you can see that I am not, some sort of Republican troll trying to infiltrate and turn people.GREEN: No, it’s like front and center. Like if you Google you, it’s like, Hey, look who left the right who’s not helping the Republicans anymore and in fact wants to hurt them.It’s you.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. It’s like literally in the New York Times and NBC and all these other places, like you can read it. Uh uh and, and, but I still get people that think that and but, but I will say there may, but there, there, there is some justification for that idea because it is true that some people, people who are former Republicans and, and that Hillary Clinton is one of them, have ha they came into the American left, and have tried to, to draw everybody over to the right.So like I know that that has happened. but you should be suspicious of those people, not me, because I’m telling you exactly what’s going on here. and, and you know, and because it is like, and, and, and, but they, but they also work in tandem with, intra democratic or in intra center left people who, who never were on the right.Public opinion is malleable, but Democratic strategists don’t realize thisSHEFFIELD: So like, people like this guy, David Shore, uh who, who have this, like, they think that they’re practicing political science, but they’re actually not like, I hate to break it to you guys, but looking at a bunch of polls and, drawing conclusions from them. That’s not political science. And you guys are No, but they reallyGREEN: do think it [00:20:00] is like if you ask them.Yeah. So,SHEFFIELD: yeah. Yeah, they do. That’sGREEN: what it’s,SHEFFIELD: yeah, they do. And, and like the, the number one thing that they don’t understand is that public opinion is malleable. There’s this idea that, well, most of the people are in the center. Well, well, no, that just means that a lot of people are uncommitted and incoherent.Yes. And if you present a strong message to them, and you are not just one message, but you present many messages and many messengers to them. They will be drawn to your side. And we, and we, and we saw that with Trump in 2024, but go ahead. Yeah,NELSON: I’m sorry. It’s very comfortable. I think it’s very comfortable. People, I think do this from an emotional standpoint, almost more than anything else. I mean, I think that for certain type of person perceiving themselves to be right in the middle, right, like right in the sweet spot, I’m normal, sweet spot, right? Everyone else is strange. Everyone else is beyond belief.But me and like everyone that I listened to and all of the beliefs that I have, they’re all normal. And, and I mean, there was, I, it might’ve been in one of those dreaded publications that we were just talking about unsubscribing from, but I remember seeing a poll where it essentially, like, it noted how many people in the poll considered themselves to be centrist and then where their ideas actually fell.Like politically speaking, and it’s nowhere near the center because, because it’s, as you noted, there’s an incoherence that, exists broadly through the society as it comes to politics. And yet come the first Tuesday, no. In November, right. We still have to vote. Vote everyone’s voting. So it’s hard to reconcile that incoherence with a functional democracy. No?SHEFFIELD: Well, I mean, that is something that has always [00:22:00] been a concern within political philosophy for centuries. I mean if you go back to Plato, I mean, that’s what a lot of his writings were about. and so, yeah, like it is like the, the people being uninformed, and, the, the risk of demagoguery and manipulation, these are, these are, these are known commodities and these are, but, but this is how the game has always been played.And, and this is why it’s so shameful that the Democratic consultant and elite class like they, they complain, oh, well Fox News manipulates people, or Joe Rogan does that, and it’s like, well, this is the rules of the game that have been in place for thousands of years.Okay. Right. and human psychology has not changed since Socrates was killed for making fun of people’s religion in ancient Greece.So that’s how it is. So like you have to change yourself. And if don’t, don’t hate the game. Hate the player yourself. In this case. Hate yourself.GREEN: Hate yourself.SHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, but like, if you don’t like the rules of the game, then you have to, you have to win so you can change ’em. Right? and, and like, and, and these guys think that, so like after the 2008 election you know, people kind of deified these people like David Axelrod who were working for Barack Obama.But the reality is the Republicans had presided over a, economic collapse. So anyone who was a Democrat would’ve won that election, let’s be honest there. And Barack Obama was a really good speaker. So like, you add those two things in, and what these guys did as their strategy was kind of peanuts.Like it didn’t really matter. Yeah. What, what they would’ve done. And so that’s why you have to focus on how things are, are changing and how they’re different. And you can see this with the Jeffrey Epstein situation. So like the, the Democratic consultant [00:24:00] class has, has been saying that literally everything is a distraction.Like they use that word distraction every fucking day for the past.NELSON: We bitch about it here all the time. Yes, absolutely.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and, and, and because they have this idea that you have to have one message. And if you just keep hammering that one message, then it’ll work. But the reality is, if the media thinks your message is boring or uninteresting or not related to the news, why the hell like, are they, are they going to repeat your message? They’re not. Yeah. It’s not going to work. And, and that is why you don’t like people. I do hear people say, well, why don’t I see Hakeem Jeffries or Chuck Schumer on the news? Well, actually they’re doing stuff every day, but what they say is fucking crap.And so it’s boring. And it’s useless.GREEN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: and irrelevant.GREEN: because what are you going to do? You’re going to be like breaking news today. Hakeem Jeffrey said that your life is unaffordable still. And you know that to be true already. And so like, here we are, you know?SHEFFIELD: It’s not news. It’s not news. Yeah. And so like that’s the, the thing that Trump has, I the Trump has an idiot savant quality to himself that the guy is obviously a war on, he has an IQ of 80 something like that.But like he has this innate marketing sense. And and, and is never, he never stops selling. And no, he’s always pushing the, pushing any narrative possible out there because like that, that was the thing in, in, in 2024. You know what, what we, what we’ve found in, literally every survey found was that.A lot of the people who voted for him had no idea what his positions were.GREEN: No. Had no idea. No. He was like a famous guy. Yeah, yeah,SHEFFIELD: yeah. He was the famous guy, or you know, he, he or they were just, they thought, well, he said the prices would go down if I voted for him. Kamala High Prices, Trump, low prices.That was literally a sign. I, I went to, to go do some work for the Harris campaign in, in [00:26:00] Arizona. Like they had that damn sign everywhere I fucking went. And I was like, oh shit. there again, sure enough, yeah. She lost Arizona. Yeah. And which was that, was that reallyGREEN: hurt? because we had gone blue before and then we reverted back to red.Yeah. I say we, I didn’t vote in Arizona that year because I don’t live there anymore, but it, it sucked anyway.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And so like, but, but the other thing also is that the, the Trump campaign and the, and the ranking elites they just, they were, they want to let a thousand messages bloom and a thousand messengers.So they like, you know what I was saying with my friend, like they, they will just give you money if you agree with them. Yeah. Whereas on the, on the left side of the aisle, people who were doing media are having to beg and plead for them to pay attention. And usually they don’t. And so that’s why we have to rely on crowdfunding and things like that because the party establishment has their head up theirNELSON: So wait, you’re saying that isn’t giving us all money?Now every time.The undead ‘triangulation’ strategy of Bill Clinton is behind many contemporary Democratic messaging failuresGREEN: No, but that’s a great story that they would love to keep keep recirculating. And that’s the thing is like the logic of it is so simple, right? It’s like if you are a person who’s getting any amount of attention for saying Democrats bad or Republicans good, then you are worth putting money into and they’ll just do it right?And like to think that like we could, that’s like so simple and so achievable that like if there’s anybody out there who’s already getting a little attention for saying actually Republicans bad, like why can’t they have a little money? That’s pretty interesting. like, we’re not doing that. Also, I, this is, here comes like a proper screen, possibly. Watch out. There we go. So the consultant thing, right? The co consultants. Keep saying this line [00:28:00] of you don’t want to be alienating or insulting to your potential voters by, I don’t know, saying words like heteronormative or whatever, which is like, no, Democrats are not saying heteronormative, but whatever but they always are like, oh, it’s so alienating.It’s so, it like, it, it’s signaling to your potential voters that like you feel like you’re better than them or you’re smarter than them or whatever. Meanwhile, what does it actually do to people who hear the message out of like Hakeem Jeffries or whoever that like, hey, all that stuff that you are interested in hearing about and paying attention to.Like, for example, the Epstein stuff. that’s actually a distraction. You’re getting distracted. You rube, you dummy you. Absolute baby, pig animal. Like, what do you think that that actually does to people who might potentially vote for you? I think. That’s more alienating than a four syllable word.SHEFFIELD: yeah.Well speaking of that’s Norma Distract six syllables. And speaking of distraction, my dog just walked in, so I had to get up there for a second.GREEN: Oh she wanted you a fourth co-host.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. She hates closed doors. So she didn’t even want to, she doesn’t even want to be in here. She just literally is like, what’s going on?Wait, she’s like, that needs to beGREEN: open. She’s like, Anna from Frozen. I’m going to bring it back to Children’s Media now. She’s Anna, she just hates the closed door. That’s fair. Same thing happenedNELSON: in the Walker interview. is C Oh yeah. Like, hey,GREEN: that was like, this isn’t cool guys. Why are we closing the door now?Nah, no way.SHEFFIELD: It’s like EricGREEN: Adams and his child. You can’t have anySHEFFIELD: privacy please. Yeah. Well, okay. So, but to your question though, Caitlin, so yeah, the, these consultants, yeah, they’re, they, they’re constantly bashing the party and actually damaging it when they say things like that because Right. The party leaders-- like Democrats in Congress do not say [00:30:00] these things.Correct. Like, this is a literal fabrication. You can look up the things that they say, like people have databases of the, the emails that they send out. You can look up the transcripts. Oh yeah, we talked to DC not saying any of this stuff. We talked to her.GREEN: Yes. She told us all about it.SHEFFIELD: So they’re not saying any of this stuff.And, and, and so when you, when you put forward this lie, what you’re doing is you are tainting the brand of the party, by making these, these false criticisms, right? You are.GREEN: And it’s not validating, lie. It’s like saying it’s like a lie that the Republicans have been saying too. because it’s like, oh well, and that’s what I was going toSHEFFIELD: say.Yeah. They can point to that and say, oh well even the Democrats say that they do this so you don’t have to take my word for it. And so like, this is seriously damaging lies what they’re, what they’re doing, and they got to stop it. why? because you know, yeah, go ahead.NELSON: Why are we always just why, why, just why Matt? No. why are we always playing by their rules? Why are we always, validating their statements? Why can folks, as you just note, come up to me and say, well, it’s not just Republicans, Trent, it’s Democrats say the same thing. I’ve seen Democrats go on the Fox News, quoted in the New York Post as saying the same thing.it’s not just us, Trent.GREEN: Oh yeah. Those Democrats, they’re out of touch, lefty elites, and they’re always doing all this academic jargon and they’re always like, they’re, they’re for the trans and not for you and me. You know, it’s college for they them is what I heard.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yep. Well, um. Yeah, it’s, it. So this goes back to their outmoded origin.So thi this was Bill Clinton’s strategy when he was the president. And they called it triangulation, so that they would put him as the, as the reasonable person against the left of the Democratic party and then the Republican [00:32:00] right? But what they failed to understand is that’s a strategy that only can work for a party that actually has a vigorous and powerful left.And so you can’t, so if you don’t have that, then what this strategy does is actually moves the country to the right. and that has been what we’ve seen except for on cultural issues where people actually have managed to stand up for themselves. Um that, uh but when it comes to things like deregulation or taxes or various, spending programs like they, they really don’t make the case for that.And so as a result of that, the default comes over to the Republican side. And you see that also in the legal world as well, where on the left there was this stupid delusion of legal [formalism] as it’s called, like the, the idea that there’s an objective legal standard, and by golly, it always seems to support what the left believes about stuff. But it’s objective, it’s science! We have a science of judging!And it was always bullshit. Because law is just simply politics in black robes, that’s what it is. And the right never bought into that.And so they’re like, nah, the law is whatever the judges say it’s and that, that has been their theory of jurisprudence. That’s why they focus like a laser beam on the judiciary and made it as a centerpiece in their campaigns to their voters. And that was the number one message of Trump 2016 was, look, you don’t have to like me. you might think I’m a liar. You might think I’m an asshole, I’m a massager, whatever. That’s fine. But I’m going to get these judges that are going to go after the trans people. I’m going to get these judges that are going to do all the things that you want that will overturn Roe versus Wade. Et cetera, et cetera.And it was very effective [00:34:00] and I knew a number of people who would spit that argument back to me. They’re like, yeah, I don’t like Trump, but, gosh, he’s going to, but he’s delivering, he said he’d appoint these Federalist judges and and sure enough he did.And and like that’s, and even to this day, after, like we’re seeing from these popularist people, that’s what they call themselves. we’re seeing them say people like as Ezra Klein saying, oh, well maybe we should run pro-life candidates in various areas. And it’s like, look, if they can, if they can come up on their own and they can win, then look, let ’em do it.But we’re not going to actively solicit people who are trying to undermine, especially on an issue where we have the majority, what the fuck?GREEN: Right.SHEFFIELD: How are you building the majority by attacking women’s rights, when and when we have the majority opinion. And we see that in all these valid, in issues that keep passing.GREEN: Right. They always, so what was the actual justification that he provided for that idea of like, pro-life Democrat? Was he, was he just saying like, oh, in those small areas where pro-life is not popular, like we could get a Democrat in and then that would be good for us.SHEFFIELD: That is, that is the general theory of what, what he says. Yeah. Yeah.GREEN: And you know, and look, but then what happens, they get into office and then they don’t protect our rights because they don’t believe in them. Yeah,The filibuster and governance obstructionSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And like, I mean it’s it’s complicated because like, I don’t, I don’t think that any one particular candidate, like, it’s not a one size fit fits all country.So somebody who’s like Joe Manchin is not going to win in in New York or somebody like, Zohran Mamdani is not going to win in Indiana or something like that. But at the same time, you have to actually have some real partisanship, and understand how the game fucking works.So like the filibuster thing, if a candidate isn’t going to commit to overturning the filibuster, a Senate candidate’s not going to commit to getting rid [00:36:00] of the filibuster, then they should never be elected regardless of their positions on any other issue.GREEN: Right.SHEFFIELD: Because we can see that with the shutdown, like it would absolutely in the short term have been advantageous—and Trump was calling for them to get rid of the filibuster to stop the Democrats from blocking them.But John Thune refused to do it because he knows that the entire point of the filibuster is to break governance and to break the ability to accomplish good things; because they know as soon as we get something done, the people fucking like it and they won’t let it be taken away from them.NELSON: It’s right there in the name. Philip Buso, if to, to be a free booter was literally as, as some of us know it, it was quite popular in the 18th and 19th century for like white folks to like go down to South America and try to start revolutions of like minority power. and that’s where the term comes from in the political sense.It is literally, as you noted, the hijacking of, of power from the majority. And yeah, it, it’s, it’s wild. I don’t, I, I just keep coming back, Matt, to the fact that we don’t seem, we need to find people that stand for stuff. You know, we’re always talking about like, well, maybe we should, compromise here.Would it be, well, that’s fine and well and good, but. But the Republicans now, Trent, they stand for the stuff that they stand for in New York, that they stand for in California, that they stand for in Arkansas. How is it that their people are all over the map? But, but it just, it sounds to me like.GREEN: Like you’re advocating for like purity testing and like ideological purity and we can’t have anything like that.Like we, we can’t expect for our democratic nominees to have, the same [00:38:00] ideologies and values as us. What if the polling tells them that it should be different?How liberals can speak more effectively in favor of trans rightsSHEFFIELD: Well, and yeah, and like, actually that, that is another point that’s in the book is that polls are not for, you don’t use polls to determine your positions.You use polls to determine your strategy and how you talk about your positions. From a, a strategic standpoint, that is a very critical difference between the two parties. So Republicans, when they take polls, they’re, they are about, how should we say this thing that we want, or in their case they say, well, maybe we shouldn’t talk about it at all. and like that’s what they, that’s what they’ve done since they, they, they, got the court to overturn Roe versus Wade. They don’t talk about abortion at the national level, but they’re still going for it at the, at the state levels.And so like that’s, that’s a much more strategic standpoint. So, and you know, whereas on the Democratic side, they look at polls and they say, oh gosh, we have a position that’s unpopular, so I guess we shouldn’t have it anymore. because people, people will like us if we get rid of it. And it’s like number one, Republicans will still tie you to that position whether you have it or not.in fact, like Kamala Harris didn’t even say anything about transgender issues during her campaign at all. When she was running, that was not a thing for her. She didn’t talk about ever. But it didn’t matter. So because they still, they still were like, no, Kamala Harris loves transgender people, so you can’t run away from, from your actual positions.and, and, uh despite what you want to say. And the same and, and Trump did the same thing with, regard to Project 2025. Yeah. You know, he tried to say, oh, well it’s not me. I didn’t do it. but you know, people, they looked at it and they’re like, oh, well obviously you did you were in favor of it clearly.Yeah. Or at least people who paid attention like they understood that he was very closely linked to, and of course when he got in Russ Vought [00:40:00] is once again back in the same seat and was the man behind the curtain for Elon Musk. and so so, so your positions, you can’t, you can’t run from them.SHEFFIELD: But what you can do is get people to talk about things that are more interesting or you make your position not threatening. So like on the trans issue, this is trans rights do not affect almost anyone. Like, that’s the reality. There are almost no trans people in the world. And getting people to understand that, look, it’s no big deal for you.And, and, and, and we’ve seen like gyms, it just have transitioned to that people, get dressed in stalls and whatever. So like, there’s no discomfort that people can have. And if you’re worried about something like that, and in, in, with regard to athletics, women’s athletics, ncaa, the president of the NCAA said there are fewer than 10 trans athletes out of more than 550,000, so--GREEN: Right.SHEFFIELD: This is not a national conversation. This is, you know.GREEN: Right.SHEFFIELD: This is just a handful. You areGREEN: unlikely to play against a trans woman, let alone lose to her.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And also when they play, they don’t really do very much better, like in the, in the Olympics they have had a handful of trans athletes compete and none of them has ever won a gold medal.Not one. So the idea, so like, but, but instead of just explaining this stuff and explaining the reality, the historical reality that trans people have existed for the entire history of humanity. And that we can see that in India where there is a very literally multi-thousand year old trans tradition of the hira there.But like, this is not some newfangled thing. So basically you have to explain, look, this is no big deal if you’re concerned about it, get over it. It’s not going to hurt you. They’re not going to hurt you. And the same people who are saying this bullshit to you are the same ones who were saying that if you have [00:42:00] same sex marriage, right. your your daughter, your son’s going to come home. We’re going to be marrying dogs, right? Yeah, yeah. Or your son’s going to come home gay.Well, guess what? It didn’t happen, right? So your son is not going to come home as a girl from getting a surgery at the school, which is what Trump has said, which is--GREEN: He literally said, the teachers are giving them surgeries out of control lying, right? Yeah. And, and yeah, it should be really easy to counter as long as you’re not scared, right? So I think that’s a absolutely right to just be like, listen, some people are trans, some people have always been trans. It’s okay to protect their right to live their own lives, and it is not going to hurt you.And here’s all the reasons why it’s not going to hurt you. And also protecting the bodily autonomy of a small minority group only helps you to safeguard your own bodily autonomy, like--SHEFFIELD: Absolutely.GREEN: As, as the as a feminist, as a woman, it’s always been pretty clear to me that like my friend’s ability to get his, gender confirmation surgery is the same Right.As my right to take care of my reproductive health. Like easy.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s right.GREEN: Yeah.Democrats failed to include pro-Gaza voices, and it did matterSHEFFIELD: This is bodily autonomy. And and, and the other thing that these squishy non-data driven consultants don’t get is that when you discard positions that are core to your political philosophy, you demoralize you were voters the, the people who would vote for you and like, and, and we saw that also, uh and, and it’s, it’s unclear as much, uh how much of an issue that Gaza was during the 2020 four campaign, because it hadn’t flared up as badly as it did once Trump came into office.But the, the reality is a lot of people were felt, did feel very demotivated by the Biden Harris positions on that issue. And, and they did a terrible job of, of, making people comfortable with their viewpoint, which, I mean, I disagreed with their [00:44:00] viewpoint, but they, they should have had like the, we’re supposed to believe in democracy over here.So like, you should let people have their say if they have a viewpoint. Especially if it’s the fucking majority in your party, right? Yeah,GREEN: Yeah, yeah. I think I re like, one of the moments that I remember from the Harris campaign that was really painful was the I am speaking moment where like, somebody interrupted an event to, to say something about Gaza and then Kamala Harris was like.I am speaking, I am speaking, and a bunch of people took that on as like a hell yeah. Girl boss moment, right? Of like, oh, she reclaimed her time. Like, how cool. And then like, but for some people it was like, ah, it was a chance for like, for her to notice that she was off. Key on a certain issue that like she, she was not reaching her intended audience in the way that she needs to in order to win.And instead she went, girl boss mode. And like, yeah. It, it was like, it was demoralizing, I think to a, a sub a, a subset of voters for sure.NELSON: Well, I mean, if, if your political consultants are telling you that those people who are heckling you are only a small portion of your group and are not actually a substantial block, then I guess you can decide to blow them off.But once you realize that, yeah, this is, as Matt noted, this is like a mainstream position for our party, this is what a, a good majority believes in. It would seem politically suicidal to do something like that.Republicans love funding unprofitable media, Democrats hate itNELSON: And you, you find yourself reflecting and asking yourself, how much of the people that are giving the strategy, getting paid? How much money are we wasting that on? How are they, right? Like we are buying slots on Fox News and Sinclair and we are also giving them a [00:46:00] salary? Like that is unbelievable because this from a lay person seems to be to be bad news.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s actually, they get even more money on top of that. They get commissions on top of that.And that’s a huge reason why they keep doing all these wasteful ads, is that the more ads they buy, the more money that they made. And Mid Romney in 2012 actually did, something that, that nobody has copied since, which was a great idea, which is that, and I’m not saying that you, you should get rid of all TV ads. I’m not saying that. But if you’re going to buy ’em. You assign someone who’s is a salaried employee and it’s their job to, to work with the stations to get these ads on. and they don’t get paid anymore. regardless of how many ads are placed or sold or made, it’s just their job to do this stuff. And and he saved a lot of money by doing that.Like this is, this is a no-brainer. that should be an immediate policy. And it would save a lot of money. You know, and it would remove the perverse incentive that these consultants are getting to push this ineffective strategy. Because it doesn’t really do much for the campaign, but it does a lot for their wallet. And that is why they do it.We have to shift things to a more entrepreneurial standpoint. Biden Harris had with their pacs basically more than a billion dollars than Donald Trump did in the campaign.And if they had diverted like a hundred million of them into media, into paying for people to have a livelihood, that all of that money would still be in play right now. And a lot of that, those things would be profitable. Like, that’s the thing that the right has really figured out. And, and, and it’s in the book, I’ve got a graphic of the cycle that they’ve done where they each, each of [00:48:00] their each of their class of, of operatives, they reinforce each other.So we’ve you’ve got the, the activists are turned into donors. The donors give money to the campaigns, then the campaigns, give money to the right wing media, which then in turn creates more activists for them. And that’s the reality.Whereas on the left, there have been a couple of, of things that were, were, that were kind of mass media oriented, that were launched, like Air America, like Current Tv, but they weren’t immediately profitable.And so the people that, that were funding it were like, oh. It didn’t make a profit immediately. Well, got it. Gotta throw it all away, put it in the trash can. Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch was unprofitable with Fox News and with Fox for years and his New York Post newspaper, that’s never been profitable, never!The Washington Times newspaper in DC, the right-wing paper owned by the, the Mooney Church has never been profitable. And they started in 1982. Never been profitable.So like that’s, uh like everybody’s so obsessed with their tax deductions and then whatnot, and it’s like, guys, you can write off a business loss in the same way.It’s a hundred percent deductible. There’s no maximum deduction that you know, that, that, that you’re up against. in, in terms of campaign donations or whatever. Like, so if you just shifted some of this money that you’re raising, and made it more effective. You could do so much and, and, and there are so many people out there that really need that help and they want to carry the me the message.They want to be the messenger, and they do a great job at it, but they can’t get funded. And so they quit. Like, are what, what kind of political movement says, oh, this person’s, uh is, is trying to help us. Let’s do nothing for them.GREEN: Yeah. Let’s just let them, let’s just let them wither on the vine. That’ll be just fine. [00:50:00]Thermostatic public opinion and why Democrats have to actually present strong affirmative casesSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And like and, and, and instead, what they, so, so within political science, there’s this idea of what they call thermostatic opinion. And that is that a lot of people’s viewpoints about politics are about more what they’re against than what they’re for, because they don’t really have a conception of governance or ideology, so they don’t have an affirmative agenda.and so what happens is that a lot of people. Who are politically incohate, they just respond very well to negative messages. And so Democrats have benefited from that thermostatic alignment whenever Republicans come in and actually start enacting their policies. Like, we have a disaster.Every Republican president has a disaster. Whether it was like, and this is no exaggeration here, you got Reagan.NELSON: No, it’s not.SHEFFIELD: and so like, they cause giant problems because of their incompetence and their extremism. Uh and so, and the public is like, holy shit, what the fuck? let’s, let’s get these people out of there.And then Democrats come in and fix things. And then people are like, oh, okay, well I guess it’s okay to vote for a Republican now. You know? And like, so Democrats need to need to be able to say, look we have. Actual positive ideas. We’re not just about fixing the Republican messes, we’re about making things better and we’re going to have a better future.GREEN: We’re future, we’re not just the cleanup crew in between Republican administration.SHEFFIELD: That’s right. Yeah. Like you have, you like Democratic, the Democratic establishment has basically made it so that the politics is like fought midfield all the time. Instead of saying, what can we do to get these politically inco people to come over to our side? Um and, and how, how can we reach them? like, like people, they’re suspicious of these ads. Like, and because everyone hates Adver, like, name me one, not one person in this world likes advertising. Not fucking one. Right, okay. Except for the people who work in that industry, [00:52:00] and even they don’t like it, I can tell you.and so like, if that’s your strategy to, to not talk to people for four years or talk to them every, every two years, that’s the only time you’re going to talk to. Why the hell would they trust you? Like, imagine if you, if your relative, came to you only every two years and they don’t talk to you at any other time, and then they’re like, Hey, vote, gimme money.Give me money. Yeah. Like, you’re not, you’re not, no one’s going to trust a relative who treats you that way. And you, and no one would trust a party that behaves that.And so you have to stay in touch. And you actually have to listen to what people want, you know? And the reality is, since 2000 I think in 2005 or so that a majority of Americans have, have disagreed with the idea that Americans heading in the right direction.And so, like if you can’t, if you can’t listen to that, then people like Trump are going to listen to that. And Trump’s very good at the gloom and doom message, and very good at telling people everything’s going to hell. And it worked.Trump’s somatic politics worked very well for less-informed votersSHEFFIELD: There’s this myth that a lot of people on the left have that everyone who votes for Trump is a racist.Everyone who votes for him is a misogynist. Everyone who votes for him is a Christian supremacist. No, they’re not. They are. A lot of people are. And even Hillary Clinton, didn’t say that. Like, she was like, oh, it’s about half of them are the deplorables. That’s what she said. So if you, if you’re one of those people that still likes her, you got to listen to what she told you, which is that it’s not all of us.GREEN: She didn’t even say half, she just said there’s two groups. She didn’t say the relative sizes. Yeah.SHEFFIELD: Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah. And I, I didn’t remember that, but yeah. But no, and, and it’s true like, psychologically it is the case that a lot of people have a, more kind of intuitionist. non, rational viewpoint about everything.and that is kind of a, kind of a, evolutionary, legacy that we [00:54:00] have. And we all have I mean, we all use our, our intuition and our, our somatic reasoning, as I call it, to, it works very well for us. You know if you’re driving to the grocery store and you know where exactly where you don’t, you’re not thinking, okay, oh, I’ve got to got to turn over here at the fifth block.You’re not thinking that you need to autopilot for you. So, like somatic reasoning, it works fine for us most of the time, but it’s not good about actually learning new things. And, and so we have to we have to be able to, to speak somatically to the public instead of letting somebody like Trump come along.And, it’s,GREEN: it’s an old lesson for teaching that, um I learned a long time ago, which was, if you want somebody to learn something new, you need to try to make them laugh or make them cry. Like you have to jolt them out of their path of reasoning so that they can accept new information.And I think that’s probably right for political messaging as well. And then on the other side of it you, you can absolutely sell the message that the people who are in power in the Republican party are freaks and evil and weird and like child predators and fascists and like all of this stuff that you can sell because it is backed by evidence, right?But then if you turn around and go, my treasured colleague in the Republican party you know, my, I I want to do bipartisanship with these people, like mm-hmm. You are again going to demoralize, right? Where you’re like, oh, you just told me that they were literally Satan and now you’re telling me that you’ve co-authored a bill with them.Like, what are you talking about? Like, I do, I think a little bit more. conviction of the, like, this is actually our opponent could go a long way.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. well, and yeah, like it is yeah, it’s a real problem that the, the left-leaning, non-political junkies [00:56:00] don’t have that strong partisanship and don’t understand what’s at stake for that.There were a lot of people also who did develop this very simplistic viewpoint of that, oh, well if somebody’s, we, when we talk to people, we’ll only talk to them based on what their demographic group is. So if, so we’re not going to talk to women about anything other than abortion. Because women don’t care about anything other than abortion. Black people don’t care about anything other than racism.Uh and like, and, and you see it saw it with some of these, there was, there were always such a disgrace with these, when they, when they have these Democratic debates and they, like, they, they will be hosted by like two white people or a white person and a black person.And then they will walk somebody out and be like, okay, here’s a Hispanic person now to talk to you about immigration. It’s like, yeah, what the fuck is that? Like you are, you are, you are disgracing yourself. if you suppose that, that people who are Latino only or concerned about that topic, right? No. And then yeah, they’re like tokenizing and then you’re forcing them to do it in that way.And and the reality is most well like the va I think the majority of Hispanic Americans have no connection to the immigration system. So this is not a message that’s relevant to them. And that’s far more harmful than some college professors saying Latinx.NELSON: And, and, and that is one thing that Trump has recognized, fully and wholly. And if you watch him go out, he talks to black folks about making money. He talks to everybody about the stuff that he’s interested in, and he pulls people out of the different communities and, and you see them up there saying like, yeah, like Latinas for Trump folks everywhere.He talks to them in a more authentic way than the Chuck Schumers. Than the Hakeem Jeffries. And I, I return to that often, right? The [00:58:00] authenticity, whether we like to admit it or not the American public to some degree sees what they’re doing over there as being more authentic than, as you noted, marching people out to ask token questions about stuff.You know, people want to feel part of the whole, they don’t want to feel necessarily picked out and, and made, made a an illustration of because what, they’re black they’re Spanish. The what, what is that supposed to mean? Right? we have to talk about the stuff that’s uncomfortable, but, but Matt, the polls say that that doesn’t, we shouldn’t talk about that.GREEN: The polls, Trent, the, the polls.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, and again, like, they, they just don’t, they don’t know how to, how to talk to people. I mean, that’s really to, to what you just said there, Trent, like, Trump during all of his campaigns did. Massive numbers of rallies in his campaigns more than any of his opponents, and like doing a campaign rally in an area that’s actually more effective than running TV ads in that area because-- and, and it makes total sense because again, like most, most of us, uh we, we want something interesting and fun. Like most people want that. and so if you got some a presidential campaign coming to your town like that doesn’t happen most of the time. and you can go to it and you can hang out with your friends, even if you don’t really like the candidate or even know much about him.You know, it’s a fun time and and, and if it’s Trump he’s going out there telling jokes and, and mixing it up and talking shit, and like people like that, like it. And we can, we can say, oh gosh, I wish it wasn’t this way. I wish it wasn’t a form of entertainment.I wish it it wasn’t this and that. Well, it is okay. So if you can’t be entertaining and you can’t be fun and you can’t laugh at yourself then get the hell out. That’s what it comes down to, you know?And in the beginning of her [01:00:00] campaign, Kamala Harris before these, because when it was only her, her people from California that had, were advising her, she was running a much better campaign than when she got the Democratic nomination. And all of these people glommed onto her the, the Carville brigade and just ruined like Tim Walls, he was on fire like his weird attack. Like people fucking loved that. they, they loved to hear funny shit. and that’s because.The economy sucks. You know, like all this, all, all this, all these horrible things are going on. Like, we want a break. And, and if we can get a break from somebody who also has ideas that we agree with, then we’re, we fucking want that. And so, tell call these people weird. Call them dumb asses, call them whatever.Say whatever you want about them. Like they’re fuckers. And they need to get fucked.GREEN: Well, yeah, right? Like, oh my God, we do not actually want them to win, right? Yeah. Should we act like it? Yeah. I think like one of the things with Harris was like, she would do something a little silly, right? She’d say the coconut tree thing, and or she’d have that laugh, and for a lot of people that was like, oh, a real person. How exciting. And like a person who has feelings Yeah. And who like isn’t just a robot, right? If, if that was the direction, but like, it felt like they were embarrassed of her. Like they, they wanted to just like. Well, let’s, let’s just ratify a little bit and then Yeah.Wal as well, because he was just like, dad, man. Like his brand was so strong. Yeah. And hopefully, hopefully he’s able to continue to, to work that because it’s a really good brand.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. And absolutely. And yeah, like they, they, they bottled up their per personalities, and were like, no, we’re only going to talk about the issues.GREEN: And that’s not anything else is a distraction Again, this distraction thing. It’s so superior, it’s so condescending. It’s, it’s down anything [01:02:00] interesting.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. And like and just like embracing who they are, just even as people like, like Trump himself had literally said that he he was like, oh, I’m more attractive than Kamala Harris.So like. He was, he was sensitive. I see ca for the audio listeners, that’s Caitlin gagging over there.GREEN: It’s just that like, okay. So I’m like, I’m not like Kamala pilled, right? I am not coconut pilled. I mm-hmm. Am quite left. And so, like she disappointed me in several ways. However, she’s a beautiful person.Her smile, oh my God, like, just give me a second to just be like, that was a smile that could light up a room if they would just let her, right? Anyway, Trump more attractive. Okay. Not even when he was 25 years old was he more attractive? And like as a young man, he was gross. He made the girls want to cover their drinks.SHEFFIELD: And the dude tall was born greasy. Like the guy fell out of a frying pan. Truly.Absolutely. But they could have done just so much with that, with Tim Wallace’s dad energy—like Trump said it he was like—oh his people were worried that people thought Kamala Harris was hot.So like, why the hell would you not play into that? Why can’t we have a president who’s hot? They could have totally done that.GREEN: We deserve one!SHEFFIELD: That’s right. We haven’t had one since, JFK, so like, why can’t we do that, right? And they could have done that, and it would’ve been a lot of fun.But they were like, no, no, you have to be serious, you have to get people to vote for them. They must eat their vegetables.GREEN: We certainly certainly can’t have a hot lady president. We can’t even have a lady president. Full stop. We can’t have a hot one too.Kamala Harris’s positions were more popular, but it wasn’t enoughSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And then this is just it’s just one of a thousand different things, because again, like they, [01:04:00] they’ve got this idea that the people only care about issues. But people don’t even know what the positions are.And like Harris’s campaign, because it was run by these consultant people, her positions were perfectly calibrated to have majority support. And in fact, so YouGov literally did a poll about Trump’s positions and Harris’s positions, and almost all of Harris’s positions had majority support.GREEN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And it did not matter because people do not vote on the issues—or most a lot of people don’t. And so they vote on what they think of the candidate as a person. They vote on general vibes. And just how the state of the economy was.And Biden/Harris really dropped the ball on that. Like the polls were showing that people thought that inflation was bad. And instead of saying, look. Yeah, it is bad. And, and here’s the 10 things that we’re going to do to lower inflation. And we’ve already lowered inflation quite a bit, and we’re going to keep going for it.And we’re going to do this for you, and we’re going to give you that to help you get a leg up and we’re going to add support systems.They didn’t do that. Instead, they were like, no, the economy’s fine. We’re doing great. And when people would ask Harris what’s the one thing you would, what are things you would do differently?And she’d be like, I wouldn’t change anything. And then, and then finally she was like I would appoint a Republican to my cabinet.NELSON: (guffaws)SHEFFIELD: Who the fuck wants that?GREEN: No, thank you. No, thank you, ma’am.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. Like, so like, and, and, and it was like, that was a bit of a tricky question, because of course she was the vice president, so like—GREEN: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: It was designed to try to drive a wedge between her and Biden. But you know, she could have said, well, I mean there’s any number of things, she could have said and done it in a way that was diplomatic. And was safe, and was [01:06:00] responsive to what people--GREEN: Politics being ostensibly her career. Like she should know how to do something like that. Right? Like, that should be in her skillset.SHEFFIELD: And even if it’s just simply saying, well we, we wanted to do this thing in the beginning, but we didn’t you know, it didn’t, the Republicans stopped it or whatever. Like that’s how you do it. You are like, we tried to do this. The Republicans blocked it. Well, I’m going to come back and we’re going to finish the job.GREEN: We’re going to keep trying.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And that’s, and that’s how you do it. But instead she was saying she’ll appoint a Republican. Like the whole point is, these assholes have stopped all the good things that we want in this country. And if you can’t say that, then what are you in this business for?NELSON: Well sometimes you got to sound like an old person for a second, you got to break a few eggs to make an omelet. You know, like if we need to say that Joe Biden wasn’t the best president, or we need to say that we weren’t as effective as we wanted.And so, like you said, Matt, we have, when we regain power and we have a a, a great majority that we can work with, yeah. Here’s are the things that we want to get done, and the reasons we want to get them done. But this, again, we play so much into what the Republicans say about us. You know, weak willed, we weak spirited.just, just let it go because you don’t want to say something bad about Joe Biden. Well, that’s okay. I’m sure Joe Biden would’ve taken the bad things for his policies to be continued. I suspect, I don’t know for a fact, but I suspect yeah,GREEN: He would’ve tolerated a couple of less than flattering statements out of his vice president. We can keep it going. If it meant that. If it meant that Trump wouldn’t win.SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah, and you know, and, and speaking of Biden, I mean the reality is he should not have run in 2024. Like, he should have let people decide. Especially given again, like, and his people knew that [01:08:00] people were concerned about him, not having the energy to do it.Whatever you think about whether Biden had dementia or not, the reality is the guy wasn’t matching Trump’s rally energy. Like he like if you want to win, you got to be out there doing these rallies. Like that’s, that’s the name of the game at this point, especially if you’re up against Trump, who will when he was when he needed to, he was doing three, four rallies a day, and Biden was doing zero. You got to put in the work. You got to put in the work if you actually want to win. And you got to, you got to welcome people into the tent. And instead of saying, well, if you don’t agree with me on everything, then go get fucked. And it’s like, well, that’s a way to lose.GREEN: Yeah. Right. Well, yeah. And while simultaneously accusing the people you just told to get fucked of, of purity testing. Purity. Yeah. Like, cool. Okay. So double insult. Thank you for like, I guess I’m out. I don’t know what to do with that. How do I, I am not in, I am clearly not invited to the party, right? So Yeah, you got to, you got to invite people into the party.You’ve got to stand by your conviction. Like if you say something, you got to stick to it. Gee, imagine that. And, yeah, be interesting that, that was something that we’ve learned, I think, is that like, it doesn’t really matter who you are, who, whatever your personal quirks are, or you know, your kind of identity and how, how your branding sort of works.Like, it doesn’t matter the specifics as long as you like show them to people, right? Like you could be Tim Waltz, the dad, you could be Kamala Harris, the like, kind of. Silly lady with the fun smile, who also like, gets really tough all of a sudden. Like, that’s all very fun. You know, you could be a zoran momani, like the really smiley dude who just like, loves his city, right?Like you can do all any of those things, but you have to do them. You can’t just like be the Democrat party robot [01:10:00] amalgam machine. No. That doesn’t work. People don’t like it.SHEFFIELD: No, they don’t. And also you have to tell people if you if you get blocked by the opposition from doing something, you have to explain that this happened.So, like Biden Yeah. Did a good thing with the student loans. And then the Republicans sue. So like, again, you talk about a perfect hand silver platter campaign issue. He was literally stealing, the Republicans were stealing money that was given to young people in America. And Donald Trump improved his margins among young people.Like what in the hell? That Republicans literally took money that Joe Biden gave to them. and, and, and Joe Biden had nothing to say about it, and, and had nothing much to say that in the Republican Supreme Court said, oh, you can’t do this. What? Right. Why? Why, why is that not, a thing that he’s outraged about?I’m talking about every goddamn day for a month, or a board, right? Like, wasn’t happening. So like, if you can’t, if you get blocked on something you want, then you got to explain it like Trump is very good at that also like, yes, peace. when he encountered opposition on things, he would explain, well, this is why I didn’t do this thing that I promised.and, and people notice that,GREEN: Well, I’m like again, what if the Democrats put their money into not Sinclair, Nexstar, CBS, Fox, whatever, and they used that money to figure out ways to tell people those things, right? Because like we’ve come up against that wall a lot where we’re like, oh, well we can massage and finesse and perfect the messaging as much as we want.But if we’re only telling people who are already a fan of us, those things, then we’re not going to get very far. Right? Yeah. So, like, what we need is to be using the money better to create a more effective megaphone that actually reaches people. And yeah, buying TV ads is just not going to get there. [01:12:00]Trump’s much more effective pop-culture media appearance strategiesSHEFFIELD: No, it isn’t. And the thing that everyone thinks about politician campaign ads is that they’re lies. Like generically, that is what you think of all campaign ads, and that’s what everyone thinks. so like you’re using a medium, everyone associates with lies as your primary delivery me vehicle, like this is idiocy.Like people believe a message that they have encountered you know, in other places like that. So whether it’s from somebody that they like as a podcaster whether it’s somebody that they, watch as a like from, from some sort of lifestyle show. You know, like that’s, they’re much more likely to believe that because they trust that this person has given them advice that they liked on some other thing whether it’s, I mean, again, like, again, you don’t have to agree with these people, but you know, like let’s say somebody likes Joe Rogan’s weightlifting or workout advice like, because they’re like, oh, well look at him. You know, he’s, he’s pretty buff. I’m going to do what he says.And and maybe it works for them, whatever. It so they like him. And then when Joe Rogan tells them, well you should vote for Donald Trump. They’re going to believe that more than Donald Trump telling them, you should vote for me. You know, and, and, and being a part of the culture. because that’s what youGREEN: expect to hear from Donald Trump.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, of course. Donald Trump’s going to tell you to vote for him. Yeah, exactly. Uh and, and, and being a part of culture and actually listening to people like when, what because Trump did a zillion of these podcast appearances on random shows and stuff shows. No. And it, most people had never heard of these shows.and yet here he was mixing it up with him. And and being, and whereas Harris. Generally speaking, did very few of these things. and, uh she had the opportunity to be on Joe Rogan’s show. He, he said, I would love to have her on the show, and they dithered about it until it was too late.And [01:14:00] then, uh then she lost that opportunity. You know, and, and so that’s, you have to, you have to be out there with the people. You have to be where they are. It’s no different than back in the old days of the politician going to the parade and kissing the babies. Well in the 21st century, you got to kiss Joe Rogan’s butt, or, doGREEN: we have to, well,SHEFFIELD: you at least have to come on liberal currents.How about that?GREEN: Okay.SHEFFIELD: Yeah.GREEN: We are the Joe Rogan of the left, obviously. That’s us. That’s, that’s the role that we’re filling. I, yeah. It. That’s, that’s always a question that I struggle with too is if you have somebody who’s clearly sort of like a, like more friendly to one side, which is not your side, like do you do you send Kamala Harris onto Joe Rogan’s podcast?Do you send Kamala Harris to talk to somebody who’s like catering to kind of more of a right wing audience? It, yeah. What’s the cost benefit there, right? Like, are you legitimizing them and are you actually like, again, leaning into their branding or are you reaching people you wouldn’t have reached or it, it’s a question anyway.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, I mean, with Rogan the reality is Joe Rogan voted for Democrats for a long time. Yeah. So he’s notGREEN: right. He doesn’t really lean anywhere. He’s just a credulous weirdo. Yeah. I mean, wellSHEFFIELD: he’s, he’s kind of libertarian, I think that’s fair to say. Yeah. but that’s more of his position, kind of very uninformed libertarian, like that’s his viewpoint.And you know, and, and so there’s plenty of things that she could have talked to him in that regard. And there’s a lot of things that from a libertarian standpoint that Donald Trump, even back then, so obviously now, like, with all of his, uh raids and whatnot and privacy [01:16:00] invasions, like, obviously that’s all bullshit.But he was still, he still had Russell vote on his you know, giving him advice and, and saying he was going to have a job in the Trump white like. If you’re a Joe Rogan fan, wouldn’t you want to know that Donald Trump’s top policy guy says he wants to criminalize porn? Yeah. Seems like that might be something that you would want to know if you’re a, a a, a weight lift bro.That one of your favorite pastimes, Donald Trump wants to criminalize it. Like, or at least his guy does. You know, and like, seems like that would be important. Or talking to them about abortion because Joe Rogan is pro-choice. So yeah, you could talk about that. I mean, there’s, there’s any number of, like, if you can’t talk to people who don’t agree with you a hundred percent and you’re a politician.Yeah. What are you, what are you doing this for? You screwed Sharon. And, and, and I think she could up. And I think she could have done, she would’ve done fine.GREEN: There’s a rea there’s a difference between like sending Kamala Harris onto the Joe Rogan podcast, the Joe Rogan, what is it? Experience? Yeah. Versus like, you wouldn’t send her on like fresh and fit or something that’s like extremely red pilled and like misogynist, right?SHEFFIELD: Oh, those guys are Nazi. That, that wouldn’t work. So yeah. black Nazis. But yeah, no, you exactly. No, that’s exactly right, Caitlin. You go around the margins and you know, and you, so like, and again, like you wouldn’t send her on to somebody like these, far right.Christian hosts either who know,GREEN: of course, of course.SHEFFIELD: But I mean, gosh, there’s so many intermediary spaces with like, we still have those in society. And even though it might be easy to think that we don’t, there’s still, a lot of places that people can be a part of and like here and just as another example of, of just how culturally illiterate Democrats are, so every year during the Super Bowl they let the president have something to say. And like, I mean, for, in my case, I, I would turn it off regardless of who the president is. I don’t want to see that. But you know, a lot of people are just leave it on. Joe [01:18:00] Biden refused that offer.NELSON: Yes.SHEFFIELD: He refused to do it. ForGREEN: what? ’SHEFFIELD: cause he was like, what did heGREEN: have going on that was more important?SHEFFIELD: He thought it was unseemly or whatever. And it’s like, again, if, why, why are you in this business? Wait,GREEN: Wait, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry. It’s unseemly for the leader of a country to appear and speak at one of its most popular events like cultural events? That’s bizarre.SHEFFIELD: It is bizarre. Yeah. It’s, it’s stupid is what it is. and, and and like this is a, like, this is a tradition whether you like it or not, so just fucking do it even if you don’t like it. And like, why would you turn down being present at the number one rated thing all year?NELSON: Like, yeah.SHEFFIELD: Who the hell is advising you?NELSON: Trump. Trump has, has, he went to a football game I think several weeks ago. He was, I think the first president to go as an active president to go since Jimmy Carter, I want to say. It was a long time ago, but. to your point, Matt, if you look a year over year at the top 100 rated television programs every year, seven out of 10 of those are American football games.They, unbelievable popularity, and he understands that. I mean, again, people who don’t think that he has some type of intelligence, they’re, they’re under rating it. He, he has, as you noted, Matt, he has a savvy, he has an intuition. He sees that everyone watches football. He always wanted to be involved in, in the NFL going back into the eighties.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, he was involved in XFL.NELSON: Absolutely.GREEN: Yeah. It’s just that like absolutely. I, I don’t like any sports really. I don’t like a single sport. Sorry, but, but like I recognize the status of the Super [01:20:00] Bowl and the NFL as cultural entities, right? Like they’re, they’re an important part of American culture. We all know this.Yeah. Like, that’s so silly. And like the, the president is understood to have a role as like a participant in American culture, right? Yeah. Like we, they decorate for Thanksgiving, they decorate for Christmas, they decorate for Halloween. Like they do these things. They host like Easter Egg, whatever. Who, who cares? I don’t care. Whatever knows the cow, but they just cultural. Stuck.NELSON: He knows the power of bread and circuses. All right. He understands this. I mean, look at what he is doing, with the UFC to celebrate anniversary, right? American anniversary. Yeah.GREEN: Well, it’s a chance to, to reinforce the concept of the imagined community of America, right? Like that’s what it’s for.NELSON: It’s, it’s to enforce all of these things. Reimagine community, spectacle. the president is doing things for us. I mean, it, he, he gets it all and it’s all him. He gets to be the star of it, right? It, it, its perfect. And you juxtaposed that with, as you were saying before, Matt, right?Like, I forget if it was all four, four years or if it was just one or two of the years that he, that he didn’t. But yeah, just a massive opportunity. Just a massive oppor. You, you are passing up Joel Rogan. You’re passing up the Super Bowl. Do you want to win?GREEN: Do you want to win and do you want to be part of this country? Like, do you want to act like you’re one of us or no? Like, yeah, that’s so weird. But, but of course that would be a distraction, wouldn’t it, Trent? And we’re better.NELSON: Correct.GREEN: We’re above distractions.NELSON: Correct.GREEN: We’re all of your petty interests, your footballs and your Epstein’s. We’re above that. We don’t have to think about that stuff.NELSON: Yeah. Oh my goodness gracious. Now time to win an election, right?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. I mean, look, there’s, so the, I, yeah, I agree with everything you guys said. And, uh I’m, I’m, I am crowdfunding this book here, so it, I’m [01:22:00] looking for people to, to buy it. So I can definitely use people’s support with that because Yeah. I’m not getting my Soros check. I don’t know where it is. Maybe it’s in lost in the mail. That’s right. Or something’s and, but yeah, I mean, look, we, we. We have to be in the scrum. Like that’s, that’s the reality. Like politics, I mean there, there’s all these sayings that about politics ain’t beanbag whatever.Like, that’s the reality. Like if you, if you can’t take the rough and tumble, if you can’t have fun, if you can’t mix it up, if you can’t be silly, you can’t be angry, you can’t be authentic, then get out. Yeah. Yeah. Let people who want to do the job, do the job and, and let people come in, invite the, this, this whole credential crap that they’ve got going on that, well, if you didn’t work in a campaign 30 years ago, then you don’t know anything.And it’s like, well, what do you know? You don’t know. Yeah. Very much.GREEN: You haven’t really shown us what you actually know because you happened to be employed during a campaign that was like unable to fail.SHEFFIELD: That’s Yeah, that’s exactly right. You know, and politics is always changing and you’ve got to change with it.AndNELSON: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: And that’s how you win, is by adapting. And like, and we don’t have to copy all the dishonesty and, the hate that, that the right is constantly pushing out. We don’t have to do that. But these guys, they, they are pros and they know their stuff because they have to be, like their, their issue positions are unpopular.Like, that’s the bottom line. And we can complain about gerrymandering, or small states in the Senate and all that. Well, that’s the rules of the game. Like this has been in place for 200 years, guys. Like, you can’t start now saying, oh, the system is against us. Bro, that’s how it is. And that’s how it’s always been.And, and if you want to change that, you got to win within the current game if you want to change the [01:24:00] rules. It’s just that simple. Yeah. and you got to actually compete everywhere. You know, like when Howard Dean was the DNC chairman, he pushed forward a 50 state strategy. He was like, look, we’re going to compete everywhere.And, and that was very important, not just necessarily because they were going to win in these very red areas. It wasn’t that it was, that they could get, the people who lived in these places would get a chance to see a real Democrat. and that they weren’t the evil Satanic caricature that Fox News was telling them that they were, they could see, oh, this is someone who has some ideas that I actually like.Fifty-state strategy and meeting votersSHEFFIELD: This is someone if I’m a farmer that actually does support farms and and, and wants farmers to have good things and, and have not have tariffs destroy their industry. There’s being out there, we have, you have to be there with the people and you have to invest in media and to carry the message to them,GREEN: Right. And study up. Like show that you know what is impacting their lives and think about what your policies can do to help them, right? Like when you’re going to visit the farms, you need to know why and how Trump is hurting them. So you can talk about how you can fix it, get them something better. Create a life that is actually even better, better than just fixing it, right?We’re not just the cleanup crew. I think that’s really important. I think that like Trump can throw a rally that’s like exciting and where he’s like fun and funny, but like the prevailing energy is like, fairly mean, right? You’ve got your grannies with your best deportations now. Signs, you’ve got, the fuck your feelings t-shirts, like you got all that stuff going on.Y you know, they, they still, they haven’t really broken out of that like, bully vibe. It’s like a bully brand, right? And like the Democrats have this whole field that they can [01:26:00] occupy to create events and, media and whatever like that has a much more fun vibe than that. Like, fun is extremely available to be had at this point where you can throw these events where like, everybody’s having a good time.Everybody’s expressing themselves, right? Like you can go to festivals and things and like the Republicans pull up at like a farmer’s market and half the people have to duck under a table in case they’re going to get, like thrown into a van. Democrats, you can show up and the party will just continue.Like, why not take advantage of that?NELSON: Sounds like a whole bunch of distraction talk though, Caitlin. So oh, I’d loveGREEN: distractions. Distract me more.SHEFFIELD: yeah, no, that, that’s a great, a great point. And, and you know, from a more like political theory standpoint what you just said actually jives very well with the kind of meta narrative of the left and the right.So the, the right, the right wing narrative is tragic. It is. The world is fallen. We are a fallen people. Nothing will ever get better. So we should just submit to the rich and powerful and hope that we can benefit a little bit from their opulence and greatness.GREEN: It’s bleak. It, it’s bleak. It’s bleak.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And and, and whereas the, the, the point of the left is supposed to be, well, if we work together and care about each other and care about society. And, we can have a better society and we can have fun while we’re doing it. You know, and yeah,GREEN: it’s literally a barn raising, like we could just like do that, right?Yeah. It’s like somebody needs something done. Okay, I’m going to go really childish here for a second, but I’ve been reading this story to my children called We are definitely Human. It’s amazing. It’s a picture book and it’s about some aliens that crash [01:28:00] land in a, like, behind a barn. And they approach the farmer and they’re like, we are for sure a hundred percent human.We promise our car has broken down. It’s definitely a car. It is not anything that’s not a car. And the, the farmer is like, okay, well the store’s closed. Like we can’t really do anything right now. It’s midnight. Why don’t you just come sleep in my living room? So they sleep in the living room and then the next morning they go out to the general store and everybody in the town hears about these like very strange people with their very strange car that need help.And so they go out to where the car is, quote unquote, and the whole town is just there. Somebody’s playing music, there’s food, there’s like, people have brought their tools, their expertise, they fix the UFO I mean the car, the car. And then the aliens leave and they bring with them the experience of like, oh, humans are helpful.and when somebody is in need, hu the humans will come together and do that. And when we meet somebody in need, we will do the same thing. Right? Like that is literally the ethos of the barn raising. That is the party vibe that we could bring if we just let ourselves do it right. Not only is it fun, but we’re working together to create something or fix something or build something better.It’s so simple. It’s let me run the Democratic party.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, yeah. Well, exactly. And like um, and, and, and it’s, it, this is what we have to do because again, like these people want to impose this tragic worldview on it, on all of us. And if we, if we, we put just say the thing, that government is all of us.And in the same way that you, if your aunt or uncle needs a, a, a cancer surgery or something, and you do a GoFundMe for them and your community comes through for you, that’s wonderful. Well, guess what? That is what government is. it is the ultimate [01:30:00] GoFundMe. Like that’s,GREEN: why don’t we just say that?Progressive vision and community valuesGREEN: What if government just did that already and you didn’t even have to make the GoFundMe.SHEFFIELD: Exactly. Well, that’s what I’m saying. Just tell people, tell them the truth: other countries have done this with healthcare. We can have all have healthcare.We can not have to worry about going bankrupt. That’s a wonderful thing. And it’s a solution. This is not a newfangled, imaginary thing that’s a far distant wild dream of the liberals. It’s achievable and we know it.GREEN: Yeah. because people have already done it.NELSON: The part of this work has to be, getting back to the Republican dominance of messaging. We have to decouple community from communism. We have to decouple society from socialism, right? When people hear that, like we’re going to have maybe buses that everyone can take in New York City, paid for by taxes.People think that’s an outrageous Right. Grabby pearls, right? They’re doing the same communist stuff in the great socialist state of Georgia. Right. Where you can get, take a free bus in Athens,GREEN: right? I mean, I think Yeah, and we, we have to own the idea that like, you’re, you’re going to have to do a little bit for your country in order to have the country that you want, right?Like ask not what your country can do for you. Like if we want to have the kind of society that does provide. The things that we think a society should provide, then yes. Those of us who have something to give, ought to be giving some, and that’s not something to run away from. And I do feel we’ve been running away from that idea.Yeah. Like, oh, yeah. What will you pay for it? Like, oh the, well, we can’t raise taxes on anything the same way we pay for everything else.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, the same way that Trump is paying for his deportation force. Like, we’ll just take some money away from that. There you [01:32:00] go. Yeah, no, exactly like this idea that, you have to nickel and dime every fucking thing like it’s crap.And, and in the same way the, the right, it had us propagated this complete lie about, oh, if you cut taxes, you get more revenue. Like, that’s bullshit. And it’s never been true. ThatGREEN: message has never been right?SHEFFIELD: No, it’s never. And like that was actually one of the things that made me get out of the Republican party was, so I was, I was, the managing editor at the Washington Examiner, and I had people that would sometimes send me articles that would say that in them that if we cut taxes, we’ll get more revenue.And I would always say, well, show me evidence of that and like, give me a citation of that, a study that says that. And if you want that in there, that you have to do that. And they, no one ever sent me anything. so I would just strike it out. and then eventually I started thinking, huh, well what if they’re wrong about a lot of these other things?And, uh one thing led to another,GREEN: and here we are and I’m so glad that we are here. and I think it’s about time for us to wrap up. So I will finish by saying if you go to Matt Sheffield’s, it’s the Flux website, right? Yeah. You’re flux community.SHEFFIELD: And yeah. Yeah.GREEN: And it’s called What Republicans Know, and you can pay $15 to get the whole thing, and that will help Matt to fund his next phase of the project, which is developing it into a full book, which is what we want.We want that book. So please help.SHEFFIELD: Yes, yes. Thank you. and you can follow me on blue Sky. If you go, if it’s, it’s, matthew.flux.community. You can follow there too.GREEN: Amazing. and you can be found on Blue Sky and maybe Twitter slash. Yes. Yeah,SHEFFIELD: I still post on there for the normies at me.Yeah. [01:34:00]GREEN: I, I have given up on the place, Matt, but thank you so much and this has been half the answer, where understanding the question is half the answer. And it is also it is also, what is it, Matt?SHEFFIELD: Theory of Change. Yes, yes, exactly. I thought you were trying to make a pun there or something!But yes, also this is a crossover of Theory of Change. So, glad to put this on there as well for everybody.GREEN: So thank you Theory of Change audience. I hope you guys hope you enjoyed us and will listen to us. Thank you Half the Answer audience, we hope you’ll listen to Theory of Change and we will see you next time.Announcer: Thanks for listening to half the Answer presented by Liberal Currents. You can find half the answer anywhere you get your podcasts. Liberal Occurrence is an entirely listener and subscriber funded publication, which includes programs like Half the Answer and Neon Liberalism. So if you like what you’ve heard and wish to contribute, you may do so at liberalcurrents.com and through Patreon.And remember, understanding a question is half the answer. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe

Episode Summary  From a policy standpoint, probably the biggest difference between Donald Trump’s first and second administrations has been his total allegiance to the cryptocurrency industry. It was a huge shift from 2021 when he argued that Bitcoin “seems like a scam” that was “not money” and could be used for narcotics transactions.All of that is out the window now. In addition to pardoning drug kingpins like Juan Orlando Hernández, Trump, his wife, and his sons have been rolling out numerous cryptocurrencies of their own. And as you might expect, every single one of these virtual assets have declined massively in value since their initial hype cycle.If you think about the history of cryptocurrency, however, the fact that Trump and his cronies have changed their views about them makes a lot of sense. Not only was Bitcoin initially marketed using anarchist libertarianism, but the industry it inspired has become completely dominated by the exact sort of plutocrats that have always bankrolled the reactionary conservatism that cemented its control of the Republican Party after the Tea Party movement of the 2010s.Joining me today to discuss what’s happened with all this is Molly White, a bane of crypto scammers everywhere. She’s the creator of Web3 is Going Just Great, a project that tracks the crypto industry. She’s also got a separate interest in Wikipedia, which has recently come under massive attack by some of crypto’s biggest schemers like Elon Musk. These two episodes are linked in my opinion, as you’ll see in our discussion.The video of our conversation is available, the transcript is below. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text. You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Exploring the far-right origins of Bitcoin and crypto--Why tech billionaires stopped imagining themselves as libertarian centrists--After ruining the global economy, Silicon Valley elites are plotting their escapes from society--The Trumpy oligarchs are different from their predecessors--How “futurism,” an obscure form of Italian fascism, became a blueprint for 21st century tech barons--Big finance and tech monopolies denied us the internet we were promised--The “network state” movement is a post-libertarian political cultAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction03:10 — A brief history of cryptocurrencies08:46 — How Wikipedia’s volunteer system works11:37 — Why Elon Musk and far-right Republicans hate Wikipedia15:47 — The emotional worldview of crypto advocates18:22 — White’s backstory 22:45 — Bizarre crypto stories and celebrity rug pulls25:43 — The two-class structure of crypto: sellers and victims34:11 — Why crypto whales hate Wikipedia’s more realized decentralization38:17 — Talking with crypto advocates45:52 — Analyzing Trump’s about-face on crypto51:50 — Does crypto have a legitimate purpose?54:54 — Network states and the billionaire escape fantasyAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: And joining me now is Molly White. Hey, Molly, welcome to the show.MOLLY WHITE: Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, so we got two big topics on deck here for today. And in a lot of ways the culture of Wikipedia and the particulars of crypto, I think it’s safe to say that most people are not particularly enmeshed in these things. Why don’t we just start with, if you could give us an overview of the history of cryptocurrency, where it came from and why are there always so many proliferating cryptocurrencies since Bitcoin, the supposedly master currency?WHITE: Yeah. So I mean, cryptocurrency really came about in 2008 to 2009 with the advent of Bitcoin which was the first cryptocurrency and remains one of the most dominant cryptocurrencies. And it was created with the idea of changing how people transact digitally financially. The idea was that, unlike a cash transaction where you can hand someone $20 and there’s no record of that ever happening and it’s completely private, there’s not really a great way to do that digitally.And [00:04:00] so the idea was that Bitcoin would be this peer-to-peer cash system. And, there was sort of this ideological belief behind it that it would help to eliminate the government’s role in surveilling financial transactions or even interfering with financial transactions. This all came about sort of in the wake of the great financial crisis where there was a lot of distrust in the government and anger at how that whole situation had happened.And so, it sort of emerged as this sort of “cipher punk” way of transacting money using the internet. But over the years it has really evolved into something quite a bit different, I would say, where there’s now this entire realm of cryptocurrencies, thousands upon thousands of them.Many of them are based on Bitcoin, but many of them are based on different systems. And, pretty much anyone can create a cryptocurrency and therefore people have in great numbers. And they have really transformed, or I’m not sure if they ever were really the, digital cash that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin had written about. They’ve sort of never really, especially Bitcoin has never really functioned in that way. But now, the primary use case I would say for cryptocurrency is speculation. Where people are speculating that the price of this token will go up or down, and making trades based on that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and the idea of these assets going up or down, like they’re not tied to anything [the creators actually control] in particular. So it is entirely speculation. I mean, like that’s, that is a fundamental difference between current, actual currencies issued by nation states. That they’re at least based on some approximation to reality, whether, depending on how, even the most inflationary currencies are still at least [00:06:00] issued by something that is accountable in some way, shape, or form. Whereas, like the inherent idea of buying a cryptocurrency as an investment vehicle, it, makes no sense at all. Except if you can get suckers, that’s what it seems like.WHITE: Well, I mean, yeah, if, if you believe that you can buy an asset and then later sell it for more than you’ve purchased it for, I think a lot of people are willing to make trades based on that, regardless of whether there are sort of fundamentals that cause a currency or an asset to, to go up or down in price.People are willing to speculate on just about anything I would say. And Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have certainly enjoyed quite a lot of popularity in that sense, even though they’re not issued by a government or a company or any sort of centralized entity.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, the currencies themselves are centrally issued.WHITE: Yeah.SHEFFIELD: But at the same time, that is, I think also why hype is so endemic to these ecosystems, because that is literally all they have to determine evaluation. It isn’t that some new mineral was discovered in the country, or that they developed some new manufacturing plan or something like that. The worth of a cryptocurrency is entirely dependent on the feelings of the people that buy it. Am I just making that up?WHITE: No, I mean, I think that’s absolutely true. I mean, obviously, especially now that there are so many cryptocurrencies, there are different versions that you could say, oh, well this one’s tied to this company that’s trying to do this thing, or, a stable coin that’s tied to, it’s pegged to some other asset.But I think you’re right, especially when you’re talking about, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, some of the major cryptocurrencies that are really not tied to anything in particular. It is based on hype, and [00:08:00] certainly that’s the case with meme coins and other sorts of tokens which are basically intended to be completely dependent on hype, and therefore subject to these massive swings in price as people either pay attention to them or forget about them, usually forget about them.But, that is really the goal is to attract as much attention and as much interest as possible so that people, early buyers can profit from those who learn about the token somewhat later.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it’s, that’s probably why a lot of people hate you, Molly, I would guess! That you are a hype deflator. And that’s the only thing that they really have. And we’ll circle back to that. How Wikipedia’s volunteer community worksBut okay, so then the other thing though, the other main research interest that you have is in the culture of Wikipedia.So, obviously everybody knows what Wikipedia is, but maybe just give us a little brief overview of the site and how it works and just how few people actually are editing it.WHITE: Yeah, so Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. It is maintained by a community of volunteers who edit the articles they write them, but also just sort of improve them gradually over time. And it’s a very collaborative project, it’s that the tagline is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit.And the idea is that anyone, you or me or anyone, can begin contributing to the project as this free and open source of knowledge that is ideally covering, any topic that people might be interested about that, fits the notability criteria and, is suitable for an encyclopedia.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And but, and not very many people actually do it though, which is the interesting thing about Wikipedia is that every, everyone uses it. But no, almost no one edits it.WHITE: Yeah, the number of readers is, far, larger than the number of editors, [00:10:00] especially if you look at, active long-term editors versus, people who come by and fix a typo and then never edit again. It is a relatively small community of editors that, that maintain the site.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And what’s interesting, I think also about that community is that I mean, Elon Musk, I think has crystallized, I think that a lot of people on the political right strongly hate Wikipedia. Actually and that’s something that right wingers have, been kind of concerned about for, I mean, since the origin of this site, when it first launched in, what was it, 2005, I think or maybe a little earlier, but whenever it was.WHITE: I think 2001.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Well, whenever it was like the, I remember, and I wrote what I wrote about it when I was a columnist at the conservative Washington Times that there was a “Conservapedia” that was started. And it still exists now to this day because they argued that Wikipedia has a liberal bias. And that’s something that Elon Musk has been really hammering quite a bit recently. And in fact, he launched his own Republican flavored sort of, I guess that’s what he kind of is. Well, he’s claiming that it’s neutral.WHITE: Right.SHEFFIELD: And of course it is! But when you look at it the Grokipedia as he calls it, which God, that sounds like something that you would vomit up after a hangover or something. But it’s largely, basically is flattering to his personal obsessions—and otherwise it’s just kind of a regurgitation of Wikipedia.WHITE: Right.Why Elon Musk and far-right Republicans hate WikipediaSHEFFIELD: But it’s interesting though that-- and I think it’s probably fair to say, and, you can correct me if I kind of wrong, but you know, I think that it is fair to say that because Wikipedia is often, has lots of articles about science and about history and things like that, that the people who are contributing to it tend to be people that are more, let’s say, [00:12:00] extrinsically oriented that actually have to be concerned about facts and coherency and structure and be able to write well in, an understandable way.And, that might if Stephen Colbert was right, that probably is going to make some people who are religious fundamentalists or market fundamentalists feel excluded. I think that might be fair to say. What do you think?WHITE: Yeah, perhaps. I mean the, sort of the fundamental principle of Wikipedia is that editors who are contributing to articles are not writing their own knowledge or their own research or their own beliefs. They are collating reliable sources. And what those sources have to say on a topic. And those sources don’t necessarily all have to agree.there can be multiple viewpoints on any given topic that are all represented, in due weight to, the prominence of those viewpoints. Which I think theoretically should allow people of very different perspectives and backgrounds and viewpoints, and ideologies to collaborate on the encyclopedia in a fairly productive way.And I would say generally it, it does, I’ve spent a lot of time editing Wikipedia, and I’ve worked pretty regularly with people who have stated that, their viewpoints are very different from mine or they come from a very different background. But because we all agree on the way that articles should be written and the process by which disputes should be resolved, it actually works fairly well.I think the problem is that there are people, Elon Musk included, who really disagree with that approach to writing an encyclopedia. The idea of neutrality as Wikipedia treats it, that basically, treating all reliable sources in, in, in, [00:14:00] weighted as, due to their prominence of those viewpoints really does not seem to jbe well with, Elon Musk and others who essentially have redefined the idea of reliability for a source or who have decided that various sources should be considered reliable if Wikipedia does not consider them to be, they have very strong opinions on bias in sources that they think should preclude a source from being used or, change how it’s treated.And so, rather than come in and join Wikipedia as editors or contribute to this editorial process, they’ve decided essentially that Wikipedia is a lost cause. We can’t. Save it or we don’t want to. So we’re going to create this replacement of it that has, no real clear editorial structure.for example, Wikipedia does not have the very transparent policies and guidelines that Wikipedia has. But that can be shaped to reflect viewpoints that they prefer, whether it’s about topics that relate to them personally. I know Elon Musk has had sort of longstanding issues with how the article on him on Wikipedia has been written.And sort of the, he seems to have decided that Wikipedia will be the solution to that and he’ll just make it say what he wants it to say. Or whether it’s, political beliefs that they have that they think Wikipedia is not reflecting honestly. The solution has really been to just replace Wikipedia with a version of it.And, it is really a version of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has sourced many of its articles directly from Wikipedia and reused them and then sort of shaped them in the way that they wish Wikipedia would.The emotional worldview of crypto advocatesSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. And it is interesting to me because I, think that there is a, common epistemic orientation between that motivation of Musk and people like him and [00:16:00] why they also like cryptocurrency. These are people that, I mean, there, there is this tremendous irony I think, in that their worldview is extremely emotional. And, it is entirely intuition driven almost. And that they, proceed from their beliefs first and then go to, well, what facts should be discussed, should be allowed to be discussed, rather than saying, well, let’s figure out what facts are and then shape our worldview.And so that, I think is, why they hate Wikipedia so much. And also why they love crypto so much. I mean, what do you think?WHITE: Yeah, I mean, I do think that, crypto is very attractive to people who have very strong ideological beliefs, whether it’s about currency and how currency should operate or governments, and the degree to which governments should be involved in day-to-day financial transactions. But crypto really enjoys this almost religious community of advocates and enthusiasts who really love their currencies of choice and, could be all cryptocurrencies or sort of a subset of them with this almost religious fervor that is not particularly susceptible to reason I’ve found. And a lot of times when people do discuss cryptocurrencies from either an economic perspective, a technological perspective, a sort of, fact-based perspective, they’re met with an incredibly hostile response as though you’ve attacked their, friend or something like that.There’s this very strong attachment to it that is very emotional, as you say, rather than, the types of emotions you tend to expect from financial instruments. most people, I would say are not incredibly emotionally attached to treasury bills or, any, I would say [00:18:00] stocks, but I, now that we’re in the sort of meme coin or meme stock era, there is actually sort of a very emotional attachment to some stocks as well.But you know, most people are not emotionally attached to SPY or, just sort of like basic financial instruments like that, in the way that you see people very attached to cryptocurrencies.White’s backstorySHEFFIELD: They are. Yeah. And, we’ll circle back to that in a bit, but I did wanna, before we get into that, I did want to talk about your own personal interest in both of these topics. So like, how is it that you got into them? Because I think that they’re related. But I’m interested to hear your backstory on that.WHITE: Yeah, well, I got involved with Wikipedia when I was very young. I was, I think 12 or 13 years old, and I discovered that the encyclopedia that anyone can edit included 12 year olds. and so I began editing when I was pretty young and then developed a real love for it a little bit later in my life.And, have been a very active editor for probably 15 years now. it’s, something that really spoke to me as an opportunity to contribute to an open and free, resource that would be available to people who maybe don’t have access to a college education or a well stocked library or, any sort of many of these resources that are difficult to access. And so, that was sort of how I got into Wikipedia.I got into cryptocurrency and, researching cryptocurrency quite a bit later. It was, I think, 2021 or so. At that time I was working as a software engineer. I had. Spent a lot of my time working on web software and people had really started to talk up this idea of Web3, in 2021 or so which was the idea that cryptocurrency was gonna solve everything that’s wrong with the web.the idea of the web really centralizing around a small number of companies these sort of walled garden [00:20:00] social networks. The inequality of how people are able to in interact on the web and the, power dynamics that exist there. And I was originally like kind of interested because I do think there are a lot of issues with the web.I’ve been a lifelong lover of the web and also a critic of the way the web has sort of evolved. And so I was interested in learning more, but as I learned more, I learned more about cryptocurrency, more about the hype that was happening, which was extreme in the sort of 2020 to 2021 era where, there were Super Bowl ads and all kinds of marketing, trying to encourage retail, everyday people to get involved in purchasing cryptocurrencies.and people were simultaneously getting completely wiped out on a day-to-day basis with hacks, or they were getting scammed or, something would go wrong and they would lose their entire investment. And it felt to me as I learned more about it, that there wasn’t much coverage of that angle.At, at the time it felt like the media profiles of, crypto companies or people, or just the technology in general were very fawning. There were a lot of pieces about is this the, future of currencies? That’s the future of the web. Look at this person who became a millionaire overnight.There was not much discussion of people getting totally ripped off or companies operating in really shady ways. And so my instinct was actually first to write a Wikipedia article about it, because that’s sort of how I grew up. That was just what I did. If there was something that I was interested in or even if it was something I wanted to learn more about.And I actually did, I wrote the, Wikipedia article about Web3. Way back then. But as I was continuing to read about it and see all of these incidents, I knew that Wikipedia really wasn’t the right place for that because, a company that pops up and then scams everybody and then disappears into the ether is really not a good, topic for a Wikipedia article.[00:22:00] There’s a million of those and they just don’t meet the notability requirements. And plus I, at this point had begun to have a pretty strong viewpoint on cryptocurrency and didn’t really feel like I should be editing Wikipedia articles about it that much, just because my perspective on it was so strong.And so it was at that point that I started Web3 is going just great, which is my website that just chronicles all of these incidents where things are not going according to plan and people are getting really hurt by crypto or crypto companies. And that ended up taking off a little bit more than I expected.And I continued to become very interested in it and researching it. And eventually I sort of became a crypto researcher and writer.Bizarre crypto stories and celebrity rug pullsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and what are some of the more bizarre stories that you’ve chronicled along the way as far as crypto? because there are so many but let’s give us a couple of highlights if you would.WHITE: Yeah, there are a lot. I mean, some of the highlights I think are, I’ve always loved the story of the people who decided that they were going to create a dao, which is a decentralized organization, essentially, and raised money to buy something called the Dune Bible, which is this storyboard book essentially by the creators of the Dune films, I believe.They raised millions of dollars to purchase the book and then realized after the fact that just owning a copy of the book does not give you the IP rights to actually do things with the book. And so their plans of creating, sort of spinoffs and all these different things were suddenly very much dampened and the whole thing ended up sort of.Just exploding in this weird meltdown. There have been quite a few crypto rug poles by celebrities, which have always been very interesting to me because watching a celebrity get caught [00:24:00] up in crypto hypeSHEFFIELD: Can you explain uh, what a rug pole is for people?WHITE: Yeah. Yeah. So if someone launches a crypto project and promises you, they’re gonna do X, Y, and z.There’s this, there was this trend in 2021 and 2022, where like basketball player, like NBA basketball players would launch NFT projects that were all themed around them. And there would be all these perks, like if held enough of these NFTs, you might get a courtside seat at a basketball game.Or, these sort of like perks that came along with it. And a rug pull is really when the project fails to follow through with their promises. And usually just, the, NBA player loses interest and the token plummets in value and you never get to go see the basketball game. Those were always very interesting to me.Or just watching like everyday celebrities suddenly become Web3 promoters was a very surreal experience like Paris Hilton on Jimmy Fallon holding up her bored APE token was just one of those moments of like, where did this all go wrong?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, and then there are so many hacks as well, like of people’s wallets getting stolen or emptied out or things like that. And, then even just like the exchanges themselves, I thinkWHITE: Right.SHEFFIELD: has been a huge thing. Not just Sam Maman freed either.There’s so many other ones that have had issues.WHITE: Yeah. I mean, crypto exchanges get hacked or, otherwise, lose customer assets on practically a weekly basis, I would say. I mean, Upbit in South Korea was just hacked, like a week or two ago. It’s, a very constant drumbeat of these exchanges getting compromised and people losing funds.The two-class structure of crypto: sellers and victimsSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, so going back to the idea though of like people having this kind of religious devotion to it. So I’m obviously you have had a lot of interactions with advocates of crypto. I’m sure like, and [00:26:00] it’s, and I, would say that there’s, there really is kind of a two class structure, if you will, that, the people who are just the, the ones running the schemes versus the victims.That’s essentially how I see it. And they do have different mentalities it seems like to me. What do you.WHITE: I think that’s true. But I also think there’s this constant belief that, the, everyday people who are buying into whatever crypto scheme is being presented to them might eventually become part of the other group, the, wealthy, successful people who are creating cryptocurrencies and making money off of them.I think most people who are involved in crypto who have not made money off of it, believe that it’s just a matter of time or they’ve had bad luck or eventually something will change and they will become one of those glorified few who have made a lot of money off of it. And so. But I think that’s true that that there is the, crypto industry, the crypto executives, the crypto project founders in one bucket, and then there’s the customers in the other bucket where, they’re the marks, essentially the people who are being sold these crypto tokens with big promises of becoming wealthy.But oftentimes it is the people in the first bucket who are making money and not the people in the second bucket.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. because I mean, it, it seems like, of any currency that ever appreciates in value, it’s, the pattern is almost always the same with these new ones. It’s, there is a huge hype cycle and it goes up for a bit and then it goes down never to overturn. That seems to be pretty much every single cryptocurrency that is launched for the past several years.is that an exaggeration or not?WHITE: No, I mean the vast, if you’re looking at, [00:28:00] especially if you’re looking at the, cryptocurrencies just by raw numbers, the vast majority of them I mean some of them really never achieve value at all. But those that do often lose it very quickly and never recover any of the value. And the only people who make money are the people who created the token, or in some cases who are very, early to purchasing the token in some cases earlier than would even be possible for any random person to buy the token.There are token pre-sales or there are allocations to select groups where you really have no opportunity to be a part of that early group. And so the only people who, join in after the fact pretty much lose money. There are certainly tokens that have had. Somewhat more sustained success, but that is, I would say, the exception rather than the norm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I, you are, you’re, writing and research on all this. I mean, it is obvious to me as altruistically motivated. You’re trying to help people, not get scammed. Have you ever had interactions with people that you know really hated you at first, or were angry at you and then later came to realize, oh, she was actually trying to help me by writing about this. Have people said that to you?WHITE: Yeah, that happens a lot actually, where I get really angry, like very, angry messages from people. And then I’ll just talk to them a little bit and try to understand what it is that they’re saying. Or often it’s really a question of understanding what it is that they think I believe, because there’s often a very strong discrepancy between their perception of me and my opinions and my actual opinions.And oftentimes, assuming they’re willing to continue the conversation, by the end of the conversation, they’ll say things like, oh, we actually have a lot more in common than I thought. Or, our ideas are really not that [00:30:00] different. Because I think people get this sort of caricature opinion of me based on, I don’t know how crypto advocates describe me or something, I’m not sure. But that somehow is like, oh, she doesn’t want any of us to make money. She wants crypto to go to zero. She wants to solve bands, or, something like that.And once they actually understand my opinions, I think they understand that I actually have a lot in common with a lot of crypto advocates around, especially when it comes to the sort of ideological ones when it comes to topics like privacy or, the ability to make transactions that are private and, not exposed to, I mean, the internet in general, which I guess sort of, is a difference for crypto advocates because of the public ledgers.But also just, to, to governments or law enforcements. I, think I share a lot of opinions with those people. The same thing is true when it comes to Web3 advocates and those who want to see blockchains used as a way of improving the web. I think we often have some of the same complaints about the web and some of the same goals for the web.And really the only disagreement is about how to get there and whether or not blockchains are a feasible way of doing it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, the reality is that none of these technologies are actually private. Like if pe, if governments want to find out what you did with your money, they can find out what you did with your money. But that is just such a fundamental thing that, that all of the customers seem to believe that is very hard to disuse them of.But the other thing that is, I think, notable is that in this bifurcation between the token sellers and the buyers is that when you look at-- like there’s just, there is there token sellers are not consistent at all in advocating privacy or wanting free speech or, wanting any of these things that their customers are being sold on. Like when you look at Peter Thiel, when you [00:32:00] look at Mark Andreesen, just any of these, he or even the Trump family, which has gotten into crypto bigly as we may say that, like they’re authoritarian in everything. And, and they’re spending big in surveillance and big in mil militarization.So like all the things that their customers seem to genuinely oppose the cryptocurrency vendors love them.WHITE: Right. I mean, I do think that there is this very strong difference between the ideological crypto true believers, who hope for freedom of speech, freedom to transact, lack of censorship, lack of surveillance, and many of the crypto industry people who will often speak about those things and use them for marketing purposes essentially, but have absolutely no.Ties to them, they’re willing to abandon those principles pretty much immediately. Whether it’s for money or political power, or the power that one earns from surveilling their customers. The goals, those early ideological goals of crypto advocates and cipher punks have largely fallen by the wayside, especially as crypto has become so speculative, and it has sort of entered the mainstream in a more significant way.And a lot of these companies have realized that, you can either make a ton of money or you can stick to your beliefs around financial privacy, but you can’t really have both. And if you want to be allied with the US government for example, they’re not going to accept that your financial transactions are private or uncensorable because that frankly does not comply with US law.And a lot of these companies would rather essentially become [00:34:00] shadow versions of the banks and financial institutions that crypto is intended to do away with, rather than stick to those ideological goals.Why crypto whales hate Wikipedia’s more realized decentralizationSHEFFIELD: Yeah. I agree. And I think that this is maybe also why you’ve become so interested in it, is that in a sense, the ethos, the goals of Wikipedia are also the goals of cryptocurrency in the broadest possible sense of decentralization, of, equality of access.They’re the same thing. It’s just that only one of those projects has actually had an achievable move in that direction. And that’s Wikipedia, whereas, cryptocurrency as practiced and sold and is remarkably unequal. It is, the, it is about, it is far more centralized.And even Bitcoin, is dominated entirely. The price of Bitcoin is dominated entirely by the holder, by its biggest holders. And that’s indisputable, like, so all the promises of decentralization, freedom, privacy of crypto haven’t happened, but they have happened on Wikipedia. And I think that also might be why the biggest crypto whales like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Andreessen, why they hate Wikipedia so much because it is decentralized and they can’t control it.WHITE: I think that, yeah, I think you’ve, touched on it there, which is that if a project is truly decentralized and, I would say Wikipedia is in some ways and not in others, it was never a goal for Wikipedia to be truly, decentralized in the way that, Bitcoin advocates wish that Bitcoin was.But you know, if you have a project that’s decentralized like Wikipedia, then Elon Musk can’t just swoop in and take it over. he can’t buy Wikipedia, which he’s talked about doing multiple [00:36:00] times. He can’t unilaterally control it. He has, we’ve seen governments try to influence Wikipedia whether it’s the US government or often other country governments trying to change what is written on Wikipedia, which has been largely challenging for them to do.And so, it, it does make Wikipedia more resilient because it is more decentralized than, many web projects are. And I think that is very frustrating to Elon Musk and to others who see Wikipedia as. this threat because it is not reflecting what they wish was true or what they wish everyone believed.It, it, relies on a very broad range of sources, not just the ones that they approve of.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting also that Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia is, well, I don’t know how he is now, but at least in his early days when I interacted with him he was very big libertarian anarchist, which is literally the, that’s the people who, you know, created and started cryptocurrency is also the same libertarian anarchist ethos.But because Wikipedia has to be actually anchored in facts, your articles have to cite credible sources, not, and, that have real scientific backgrounds or, actual fact, reliable sourcing of, historical depiction. This is why, this more intuitive epistemic orientation, that’s why they’re so angry about it now. It isn’t just the central, the decentralization of it. It’s also that they don’t think in terms of facts. They think, in terms of feelings, I think.WHITE: Yeah. Or they sort of select facts that align with their predisposition. Yeah, right, exactly.[00:38:00]SHEFFIELD: which is, and, there is a sociological irony also in that. I mean, when you look at these fields, they’re overwhelmingly dominated by men who insist that they are ultra hyper rationalists.WHITE: Rational. Yeah.Talking with crypto advocatesSHEFFIELD: and yet, cryptocurrency is, entirely hype. I’m sure that’s also been a little interesting for you as a woman to interact with that field because it does seem like that pretty much everybody in crypto is a man.WHITE: There is a pretty strong male bias, I think in the demographics of crypto enthusiasts. But yeah, I mean, I think that’s really true. And a lot of people who are into crypto are very similar in that sense, in that they believe that, this is all founded in mathematics and cryptography and very, hard math or science, not sort of touchy feely types of things. But then, you see that same behavior where if they like a cryptocurrency, then if there is any fact that challenges that cryptocurrency or, introduces doubt it’s dismissed as illegitimate or inaccurate or, somewhat how unacceptable, whereas they will essentially concoct information or facts or math, that they believe will support their opinions.You see this a lot with the sort of technical analysis types of people who, will take all these price charts of a cryptocurrency and draw these like lines on them that always promise that the price is gonna go up and it, it doesn’t really matter what actually happened historically.They find a way to sort of, fudge the lines so that they know that the price is just about to go to the moon and it, often doesn’t play out and they never seem to be terribly thwarted by that. They just redraw the lines and, continue to predict that the price jump is right around the corner.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it is interesting in that regard also [00:40:00] that, so they, believe they have no accuracy obligation, but the people who criticize them have to always be accurate.WHITE: Yes.SHEFFIELD: you have to be a hundred percent accurate and they can be 0% accurate actually, and it doesn’t matter because, they be, they have the correct emotional starting point.They have. The first principle, like that’s, that I think is, and that’s something that, that we’ve explored on, my podcast here for several different episodes. Like this is basically they, don’t think empirically, they think in terms of everything is from first principles that from and from my emotional state, if you will.So if I have the right starting point, then I can be wrong about everything I say and it doesn’t matter because I’m still right. That seems to be how it kind of works. and I don’t know. I mean, like, so, so I mean over time ha have, has the crypto communities, have they kind of changed how they respond to you though, in particular?Because like, I my suspicion is that maybe when you first got into this stuff, they were, saying, oh, how dare this girl tell me I’m dumb? But now they realize, oh shit, she actually knows what she’s talking about. I don’t know. Have they changed in their responses to you, do you think?WHITE: Yeah, I mean there’s always been a wide variety of responses to me. I would say there, since day one and continuing through to today, there are people who have that very exact reaction, which is like, who is this dumb lady who is telling me my crypto, is, not what I think it is or that there’s problems in this industry or that, this might be a scam.But I would say there have also always been people who are fairly receptive to what I have to say. I think that there are reasonable people in the crypto world [00:42:00] who appreciate that, there are problems there and that it is useful to have someone pointing that out. I’ve always appreciated those people who, I do think that no matter how much you love something, there should always be a willingness to take a step back from it and, evaluate it and analyze if there are issues or, things that need to be considered.And then I would say things have changed pretty dramatically in terms of the politic politicization of it, which is that when I first started writing about crypto, it was not a Republican thing. It was not heavily tied to any particular political belief. I mean, there was certainly, the libertarian segment which has always existed, but you know, it was not something that presidents were talking about or congress people for the most part.and that has Trump said it was a scam, actually. Oh.Yes. Right. That has really changed. Where now in addition to people having really strong sort of crypto beliefs, they also have very strong political beliefs. And those two things are often very tied. And they often, I think. Elicit similar responses when they’re threatened, which is that, political beliefs are very emotional, very, personal.And so any challenge to those is often met with hostility. I think the same thing is true with crypto. And now that the two have become so tightly linked and there has been so much bleed between politics and the crypto world, that is only more so. And so you get this sort of radical political segment as well, which is not something that I had engaged with or, experienced much when I first began writing about this in people, these days I think are a lot more concerned with my own political beliefs than they ever were when I started.SHEFFIELD: Oh, that’s, that is interesting. So in other words, what they’re asking you, what do you believe about this issue or whatever is they’re challengingWHITE: they’re very, [00:44:00] yeah, they’re very concerned with, oh, she’s a leftist, so therefore she has no, she can’t possibly be capable of speaking on this issue. Or, oh, she believes about this completely unrelated political issue. And so therefore, she has no right to be talking about crypto.the two have become very, closely linked, or, oh, she hates crypto because she’s a leftist, or she’s a leftist because she hates crypto. The, two things they have really closely linked together.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Okay. I get it. Well, and there, there’s an irony in that position, which they really, and, that is a position they often, say in other areas besides crypto. But you know, like they don’t get though that the entire idea of a market is a government creation. Governments make markets, do not exist without governments.If you didn’t have a government, basically the people who have the most guns would have everything. That would be it. There would be no market. The people who had the most power would have all the other things as well. And, it’s just that simple. And so like, so therefore, as somebody who, believes in a stronger role for government, what you were saying actually makes perfect sense for you to talk about.Rather than, being some sort of contradiction that as somebody who, values a strong government as a, in, a protector of democratic values and civil rights, you should be talking about this if you want to.WHITE: Right.SHEFFIELD: and, but again, like this is, it all reflects their, sort of standpoint epistemology, that they have the right starting point, so therefore everything they say is true.And you have the wrong starting point. So therefore nothing you say is true, even if it is,WHITE: right.Analyzing Trump’s about-face on cryptoSHEFFIELD: yeah. Well, okay. So, but, and you mentioned the political angle, I mean, and that is one [00:46:00] thing that has been just dramatically different for the second Trump administration compared to the first, is that the first time around he-- as, I said, he thought Bitcoin was a scam. And this time around now, he’s literally brought in David Sachs, one of the biggest cryptocurrency scammers, dare I say, into his high level administration, and and so I mean, what, do you think accounts for that difference between Trump, of the two Trump terms?WHITE: Well, I mean, I think that, some of it is financial. I think that Trump has realized that crypto is very lucrative for him personally. And so we’ve seen him and his family members launching endless cryptocurrency projects. Which of course is Ben, those benefit from his promotion of crypto as well as his actions to, pressure regulators to back off from crypto and congress to write new laws that are in supportive of the crypto industry.So, I think that’s a big part of it. And I think also that, there are very wealthy people in the crypto industry and, very wealthy tech. Entrepreneurs and businessmen who were, willing to, support him, who came out of the crypto industry. And so he was willing to change his stance in order to court that money and that political backing.But I also think that, crypto has become a useful tool in terms of, his political agenda. When it comes to mass surveillance, I think crypto is actually very well suited to that. when it comes to government control over what people are doing with their money, crypto is actually very well suited to that despite its intentions.the way it has been designed essentially allows for war warrantless surveillance of people’s transactions if, the government so chooses. And so I think thatSHEFFIELD: Yeah.WHITE: Exactly right. And so I think that, some [00:48:00] of the adoption of crypto and the interest in crypto has been because it actually aligns fairly well with the authoritarian goals of his regime.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s a, that’s an interesting point. And I think that’s right. And so ultimately there isn’t really a contradiction between advocating for crypto and wanting that centralization of authority and power.WHITE: And I think that, a lot of what a lot of the ideological parts of crypto were more aspirational than built in to the technology. There’s really very little that is allowing, from a design perspective that is causing Bitcoin, for example, to be privacy protecting.There’s very little that keeps it from centralizing. And so, as we see the actual, reality of the crypto ecosystem evolving, we do see cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, centralizing becoming less private, becoming more easily traceable, becoming more easily frozen, or controlled by centralized entities.And so, just because people say, oh yeah, Bitcoin is private, Bitcoin is censorship resistant. I, ideally, aspirationally, yes, but in practice, maybe not so much,SHEFFIELD: Yeah, well, not really at all, frankly. Well, so, but at the same time that Trump has, really gotten into all this stuff, we have to say that it, there are some people in the democratic side of things that are advocating and taking money from the cryptocurrency world.And and Sam Bickman free before he was sent to prison, was, if not the biggest democratic donor, at least one of the biggest. And he hasn’t, and he would spend, he’s been kind of replaced. So like there are still are several a fair number of Democrats out there that are crypto advocates.Like how do they even justify it with regard to progressive [00:50:00] ideology? Or do they even try.WHITE: Yeah, I mean there isn’t a whole lot of attempt, I would say, to justify it as a progressive tool. Although you do get, a lot of lip service to things like, oh, this is gonna democratize finance. This is gonna make it more, possible for minority communities to get access to banking and all these things which generally are not supported by evidence, but, have been very popular stories.So you do hear some of that from Democrats, but I think a lot of it just comes down to, a lot of Democrats also are acting in service of power and wealth and are willing to get on board with. What they think will be, will enable them to accumulate more of that, or that will please the wealthy and powerful people who are supporting them that will, the things that they think will guarantee reelection.And so I think a lot of it frankly doesn’t come down to beliefs or ideology or what’s best for their constituents, but it comes down to what’s gonna fund their next campaign or what’s going to earn them brownie points in the eyes of political mega donors and fundraisers and, influential voices.Frankly that’s not a particularly partisan question. I think a lot of politicians are just serving those interests and so it’s somewhat predictable. I think that there has been some bipartisanship on the crypto issue. But I think that when it comes to people who. Are very outspoken in favor of consumer protection and, the ability to engage in society and finance in an equitable manner.You tend to see less support for crypto and these sort of procr legislation that has been pushed by the crypto industry.Does crypto have a legitimate purpose?SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah, I, that’s definitely true and unfortunate. Well, so I mean, so do you think there is, I mean, a legitimate role for [00:52:00] cryptocurrency in society? Or like, what would you, in your ideal world, if you could wave a magic wand, what would you say about it?WHITE: Yeah, I mean, I, am not someone who thinks that, crypto should be banned or Bitcoin should be banned. First of all, I don’t think it’s a very realistic thing to do, but also it’s, I don’t think that should happen. I, don’t think that gambling should be banned. I think there are a lot of.Behaviors that people choose to engage in that assuming that they are well-informed and, operating in a fairly fair system, they should be allowed to do. The problem is that in, and most of my objections come in where people are not operating in a fair system. They are not. Making trades based on a full understanding of the facts.Many of the, many of the times they’re being outright lied to. They are often engaging in systems where they expect the kinds of regulation that Americans have become very used to. And it, when it comes to the stock exchange or other sort of highly regulated financial systems, they expect that to be in place when they’re in working with crypto or, trading crypto, and are very surprised to find that it’s not.And then, regulators are not involved in policing crypto markets. In fact, they’re sort of making it more possible for crypto wrongdoers to, to steal people’s money. And so you have this system where people are getting absolutely taken for a ride, which that is really what I object to. I think that if crypto is going to be a part of day-to-day society, then it needs to be very highly regulated. It needs to be something where people are given a very full understanding of the risks. that you might lose all your money. Someone might just run away with it at this point.Or there needs to be strong enforcement so that’s not happening. But I mean. I don’t see a role for crypto in the sense [00:54:00] that, Trump sees a role for crypto. I don’t think it’s gonna replace the financial system. I think that there are absolutely issues with traditional finance that need to be resolved, and I don’t think that creating a shadow financial system with a sort of worse version of what we have in traditional finance with crypto is the way to do that.So, I think that people should be allowed to do, broadly speaking whatever they want to do, so long as they have all the information and they’re operating in a fair environment. And likely crypto would become a fairly niche speculative investment for those who like very high risk, assets that are not particularly tethered to anything of intrinsic value.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, I mean basically it’s as practiced, not really appreciably different from casino gambling. It, I mean,WHITE: Except that casinos are actually pretty regulated.Network states and the billionaire escape fantasySHEFFIELD: Yeah, I know. Well, except in that way, yes. No. great, point, Molly.Okay, so let’s maybe end on the, just like, it seems like the future that the elites of crypto are trying to push toward is this concept of network states. It seems like, like that’s, that idea has infected the brain of every elite Republican, it seems like, that’s not incredibly ancient or just some pol politician ddy, but like they, they have all become obsessed with this idea. So what, is a network state? And like, why is it and what are your thoughts on it? I guess?WHITE: Yeah, so I mean, network states are basically this idea that rather than having geographical states. You would have states that were formed based on shared ideology, shared interests, sort of if you really care about organic gardening, then you would go and join the Organic Gardening Network state [00:56:00] and you would be with all these people and you’d be governed accordingly with people who share that interest.and there would be any number of these states that would sort of replace the traditional, statehood that we are, used to. And a lot of it, is very crypto related, where these would all be on the blockchain and, all these transactions would be happening using cryptocurrencies.And if you disagreed with how your state was being governed, then you would just switch to another state and, find one that matched your beliefs more closely. It’s a very sort of weird fringe, I would say ideology. And one that I don’t think is particularly practical, but it’s something that has been very appealing to a lot of sort of hard right tech visionaries.I don’t know, whatever you would call it, but,SHEFFIELD: people who don’t want to pay taxes is what I wouldsay.WHITE: yes, and I think, I mean, I think a lot of it comes down to, they don’t agree with everything that, whatever government is doing. And so they want to, Elon Musk with Wikipedia. They don’t like how it’s run and so they wanna create their own version with their own rules, which they essentially control as they see fit.And I think it is part of this very sort of escapist ideology from a lot of very wealthy tech, folks, which is that, things have become fairly dire. the, inequality in the world has become very severe. They are becoming more and more held to account for it. I think everyday people are becoming more willing to accept that.Maybe billionaires don’t have their best interests in mind. Maybe that there is, there is some culpability among tech giants or incredibly wealthy people, or, oftentimes the intersection of the two for the way that the world has become. And a lot of these people, those very same wealthy tech people have decided that, [00:58:00] the best solution is to essentially run away from it.I mean, it’s, sort of, the Douglas Rushkoff, survival of the richest, escape fantasy, which is that, they’ve made the world appreciably worse. People are beginning to recognize that. And now the idea is like, let’s all run to our bunkers where the people who have been victimized by this can’t hold us to account for it.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, in, in, in a lot of ways it, I just see this as a 21st century version of Vine Rand. I mean, that’s really what it is that people, who exploited their customer and exploited their employees. Yeah. That they are now trying to sell the fantasy of ’me evading accountability and taxation it’s actually good for you’ that is fundamentally what the network state sales pitch is. And it’s like neo feudalism with the fake promise that you’ll be able to, exit. Because like the reality is if you live in a nation or you know some place you have and you have your stuff there, and you have a job there and you have people there, you can’t just fucking leave whenever you want.Like I see that, that same, people sometimes will say about, like, with regard to abortion restrictions, like they’ll say, well, why are women living in a state where abortion is illegal? And it’s like, gosh. Do you think that they want to do that? Huh? Maybe, maybe they don’t have a choice where they live.WHITE: Yeah, I mean, I do think that frankly a lot of the people who most believe in this network state idea are very isolated. They don’t have strong connections to other people or to any particular location. And so I don’t, I mean, I think to them it doesn’t cross their mind that they wouldn’t just up and leave.And certainly they have the resources to do so, and it doesn’t cross their mind that other people might not, or they don’t care, frankly.[01:00:00]SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s a good point. and it does loop back to the, sociological trend that we were talking about earlier, that with so many of these detached men, basically that’s who the crypto purchasers areWHITE: yeah. I mean, I think that’s why people in the crypto world are, so, you constantly hear people talking about community. This is a crypto community. It’s like, no, you, just all hold the same token. You know? It’s like I’m not in a community of people who holds, some ETF, right? Like, I’m not, that’s not a normal thing.But in crypto with that strong, personal attachment, people have really used community as a way to draw people in. And to make it challenging for them to leave. It’s something I wrote about a long time ago, but if you basically convince people that, if you buy my NFT, you’re gonna be a part of this tight-knit community, then people don’t wanna sell it because then they have to leave the community.And I think there’s been this sort of weaponization of community which has been very alluring to people who don’t have much community in their real lives.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. And it’s had tragic consequences for so many people. And nobody deserves that, whatever their beliefs are. So, I mean, so do you have any thoughts though on, in terms of where anything might be headed in this regard, or what do you think as we wrap up here?WHITE: Yeah, I mean, I think we’re in a weird situation right now where crypto has become, it’s come a long way from its early ideological origins to become essentially unrecognizable. Meanwhile, crypto tends to follow these incredibly extreme boom and bust cycles, which can be incredibly devastating.and I think frankly, it’s just a matter of time before we see another one of those things happen with potentially very, traumatic con consequences for people who. Like we saw last time [01:02:00] around in 2022, a lot of people lost everything. And now we’re looking at people who have been encouraged to buy crypto by their governments, by very influential people and who have sunk quite a lot of money into it.And it’s been incredibly closely tied to now the entire US government. I think it’s gonna be a very interesting road as things evolve. Especially when you add in the factor that, with regulators stepping away, there’s been more opportunity for malfeasance, those types of the sort of shady business that tends to go on behind the scenes even when regulators are ostensibly paying attention tends to be what can cause incredibly dramatic downturns in crypto.I mean, FTX, for example, the collapse of FTX was a major component of the crash in 2022. And so, I think we’re potentially in a very dire situation when it comes to crypto. And what comes of that I think is, sort of anyone’s guess.SHEFFIELD: Well, I guess we’ll see then. So, you wanna give out any websites for people to keep up with you in theWHITE: Sure. Yeah. So I write the newsletter citation needed, which is at citationneeded.news. I also run Web3isgoinggreat.com, which is the sort of timeline of crypto disasters. Um, And then you can find anything else about me at mollywhite.netSHEFFIELD: All right, sounds good. Thanks for being here.WHITE: Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right, so that is the program for today. I appreciate you joining us for the conversation and you can always get more if you go to Theory of Change show where we have the video, audio, and transcript of all the episodes. And please do subscribe to the show if you haven’t already. Whether you are watching on YouTube or listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever else, please do click the subscribe button so you can stay in touch.And get all the new [01:04:00] episodes. And if you want to subscribe on email as well, you can do that on Patreon and on Substack. Just go to patreon.com/discoverflux and you can go to flux.community to subscribe on Substack. So thanks a lot and I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit plus.flux.community/subscribe