Theory of Change Podcast With Matthew Sheffield

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

Arthur MacMillan, a veteran political journalist and former head of AFP's fact-checking unit, discusses the chilling effects on media during Trump’s second term. He highlights how media organizations are kowtowing to the administration, evidenced by CBS's controversial hire of Bari Weiss. Beyond that, MacMillan addresses the decline in trust, the rise of partisan outlets, and the impact of tech owners like Bezos reshaping news organizations. He predicts a shift toward smaller, niche publishers as traditional local news continues to fade.

Episode Summary  Like people, ideas have histories, even when we’re not aware of them. Living in an age of uniquely advanced science and technology, we don’t always perceive how our allegedly most rational beliefs can actually be based on ancient legends and stories. That certainly appears to be the case with many Western medical and psychological beliefs about women’s health, sexuality, and pain.From the Garden of Eden myth casting childbirth as a curse to Greek philosophers describing women as inverted men, these cultural frameworks have deeply influenced how female bodies are perceived, researched, and treated. For generations, women’s pain was normalized, their pleasure dismissed, and their experiences left out of medicine altogether.My guest today, Suzannah Weiss, has been writing and speaking about these issues for years. In her first book Subjectified (which we discussed on Theory of Change last year), she explored how women are socialized to see their sexualities through the lens of shame and stigma. Now, in her new book Eve’s Blessing: Uncovering the Lost Pleasure Behind Female Pain, she takes on the cultural inheritance that tells women to expect suffering in their bodies, from menstruation to childbirth to sex itself.In our conversation, we trace how myths and religious teachings became medical dogma, how centuries of ignoring women’s health needs still show up in research gaps and dismissive doctors, and why ideas like the “orgasm gap” persist. We also talk about what happens when women push back—when they reclaim pleasure in childbirth, resist the narrative of inevitable period pain, or simply insist that their symptoms deserve serious attention.It’s a balancing act. Culture shapes the mind and how we live in our bodies. But it’s also true that how we think to our situation can affect how our bodies feel generally. Pain and suffering are real–and so is pleasure. If old ideas can teach us to expect suffering, then perhaps new ideas can help us find joy, intimacy, and freedom.The video of this episode 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—Women are discovering how to become a sexual subject rather than an object (Suzannah’s previous TOC appearance)—Why the right-wing freakouts about sorority dancing are about so much more—Reactionary gender messages are trying to poison kids’ minds, here’s what parents are doing in response—The ‘world’s oldest profession’ is attaining new relevance in the internet age—How Republicans became the party of misogynist online trolls—Science and sex are obviously different but what they have in common is why they’re both hated by reactionariesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction09:53 — The one-sex and two-sex models13:36 — Medical dismissal of women’s pain20:50 — Suzannah’s personal health journey23:42 — Cognition as an embodied act34:39 — Contradictions in male attitudes toward female sexuality36:53 — Gender non-conformity and the myth of brokenness42:44 — Trauma and its physical manifestations50:17 — ‘Sexy but not sexual’58:10 — Mindfulness and body awarenessAudio 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 Suzannah Weiss. Hey, Suzannah. Welcome back to Theory of Change.SUZANNAH WEISS: Hi. Thanks so much. I’m so glad to be back.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So you’ve got another book out. The last time you were on, you were talking about your first book Subjectified, and this one is called Eve’s Blessing, which is about society and it’s particularly Western society, focusing on women’s pain and seeing it as sort of destination and inherent to women. Can you walk us through just kind of the origin of that belief in Western culture? Because that’s where you start the book off. And I think we should start off here with that.WEISS: Yeah, so my book is called Eve’s Blessing: Uncovering the Lost Pleasure Behind Female Pain [00:04:00]. And it’s about experiences of mine and other women of having their pain normalized, including period pain, childbirth, pain during sex, and even pain associated with chronic illness, along with what I call pleasure-lessness, meaning sex without an orgasm, sex without pleasure, even painful sex, and how this ties to different ideas, particularly the curse put on Eve in the Garden of Eden, and ‘thou shalt give birth in sorrow.’ And how in some religious communities, this is considered a curse, not just on childbirth, but on menstruation, even on first time sex. There, there’s, other parts of the Bible and I focus mainly on Judeo-Christian religions. like in Deuteronomy being, This passage about use blood on the sheets as a symbol of painful, of like virginity. the idea that sex for the first time is inherently painful and there’s a whole history behind that. The idea of the hymen, which is not actually like some medical professionals call it the vaginal corona because hymen is not.Really a, accurate term with the association we have with it is that it’s this seal that you need to break. And that’s not true. It’s just part of the vagina that naturally stretches. And yeah, there’s all these experiences women have had, I my own was dealing with various symptoms of chronic illness and being told that a lot of it was normal.Also, going on antidepressants and being told and having difficulty orgasming because of that. I’m being told a lot of women deal with that. Just use a vibrator. And, my book also shows how women are living the opposite life. That these ideas would suggest how women are [00:06:00] having pleasurable childbirth, pleasurable periods, pleasurable, orgasmic sex and pleasurable childbirth is a weird concept to many, but I interviewed a lot of women who indeed had this experience and, Yeah, just how we, underestimate like how good it can be to live in a female body, but thankfully women today are waking up to that.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, that’s right. And the idea though of women’s bodies as being somehow destined for pain obviously that’s, as you said, clearly a, genesis type, belief.But also, you talk about that there was that this belief was pretty common in, some, Greek cultural stories as well. in addition to the idea that, I, that women were sort of destined for pain the Eve, the Adam and Eve myth, it also is inherently blaming women for trying to get knowledge.Also, I think that’s worth talking about as well,WEISS: Yes, there’s actually, it’s really interesting today we have this idea that women are less sexual and more pure. And that actually arose around the 17 hundreds. And before that it was thought women are like lascivious and desirous because ate the apples.So women are hungry and curious and sin prone. So it is really interesting no matter what, we take from that story, we take something negative about women.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and then of course there is, and she’s not in the Bible, but of course there’s the, Lilith character as well within the Judaic legends as well.Right. You, review that for people who dunno the story. Yeah.WEISS: Well, our friend Kaitlyn Bailey talks about that in her show, Whore’s Eye View. She says Lilith was the one who wanted to fuck [00:08:00] Adam on top, and Adam was intimidated by her. So we went with Eve then. She represents the dark feminine, so she was the witch, the bitch and the whore.And, I think Jewish mythology and we, kind of cast out that aspect of women because we, demonize Lilith.SHEFFIELD: Well, literally in her case. And it’s hard for cultural historians to kind of pinpoint the amount of influence that her story had because she was cut out of the Bible.But there’s a lot of these extra-biblical characters who you see them crop up in art a fair amount over the Renaissance and even some medieval times. So these stories circulated even though they were not given canonical status.And, I think that there’s, that there’s reasons for that because they were meaningful.WEISS: I, I worked with a Jungian therapist last year who taught me something about Lilith because I kept telling her I was having psychedelic trips and dreams where I kept seeing a black snake. And she showed me this image, this painting of Lilith with a black snake wrapped around her, and it represented the dark feminine.And she suggested that was what I was accessing in the symbolic realm, was this dark, feminine figure that needed to be brought into the light.SHEFFIELD: I don’t know how much I buy into Jungian psychiatry, but that there is something there that, people do have these—there is something, I think to the idea that there, that ideas resonate because we do have common experiences as human beings and, I mean, that’s what this book is about.The one-sex and two-sex modelsBut you also do talk about just the idea [00:10:00] within Greek philosophy proper that that women were not quite even the same species. It seems like, when you look at as you do, talking about, some of the, ancient, the original doctors and things like that.Right. Tell us about that, if you would.WEISS: Yeah, so there’s a famous book called Making Sex by Thomas Laur that tracks, and some historians have challenged it because it’s not this simple, but what he argues basically is that from the time of the ancient Greeks, until around the 17 hundreds, scientists followed what’s called the One Sex Model where male and female bodies are considered basically the same.So the ancient Greek philosophers. Said things like, women are like, men turn inward, and women are like, women’s genitals are like mole’s eyes. They, they’re there but they don’t really have a function like mole’s. Eyes didn’t see. And so there was this idea that women were smaller men, or inferior men, or like inverted men.And it caused this gap in research where research. Was done primarily on men, and it was assumed to apply to women also. And we see this today, we see, for instance, certain health trends like intermittent fasting or high intensity interval training don’t work as well for women. And all the research is done on men and it doesn’t factor in things like the menstrual cycle in women’s hormones.And then on the flip side, around the 17 hundreds, due to a variety of political forces, specifically the Victorian era in England, saying that women were pure and Medford domesticity and also the, French Revolution saying, that women, [00:12:00] there was sort of a feminist movement, but then there was backlash saying women need to stay at home while the men are revolutionaries.And so all of these sort of, these factors, and then there were scientific discoveries, like the idea that actually women did not need to orgasm to have a child, which was actually not, widely believed around, the 16 or 17 hundreds that was discovered, that used to be believed that women like needed to orgasm, to conceive, and actually the clitoris was more valued.And so all these different factors led to what’s called the two sex model, where women and men are seen as opposites. And basically that contributes to ideas like the normalization of the orgasm gap that men can orgasm so easily and women cannot, or basically that men are made for pleasure and women are made for pain.So right now we, we see both of. The influence of both of these ideas. We see this research gap between, male and female bodies, and we also see where like women are assumed to be exactly like men. And we also see, this idea that men and women are opposites. And like, testosterone is this hormone that causes you to be really horny and angry, and estrogen causes you to be warm and nurturing, which isn’t the case.They both have many roles. And we also erase people outside the gender binary, intersex people, two-spirit people, et cetera. And that’s all tied in with colonialism. That’s my, like, that’s my two minute version of that whole story. Mm-hmm.Medical dismissal of women’s painSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and yeah, and, absolutely like within the medical context it, it did, it was also that, that, as you talk about that, women’s.Pain was not believed to be real in some sense because, well, all the doctors were men. And so, when women were talking about, period pain or, various, [00:14:00] complications with pregnancy, they were not believed in some sense, right? Or just assumed, well, this is how it is. And, as, and as you talk about the pregnancy for at least for, for some women, not, we can’t say for everybody obviously, but for some women, they, they don’t see it as that way, as something, inherently or obviously destined to be painful.Right.WEISS: Yeah, there was a tension in writing this book between acknowledging women’s pain as real and also as not natural or inevitable. Because it is a reality today that many women live with period pain, that for most people giving birth, it is painful. And so I definitely don’t aim to invalidate that pain.My goal is to explore where it comes from and for instance, period pain. There’s not a ton of research, but there is some research tying it to things like household chemicals, things like the modern American diet. Things we kind of take for granted in society. Overworking, sedentary lifestyle stress.It’s kind of a, society-wide problem that is contributing to certain forms of pain, women experience, and of course un undiagnosed illnesses, misdiagnosed illnesses, lack of research on women, and, even childbirth. There is a lot of pain that is connected to childbirth, trauma to deprivation of choice, to unnecessary interventions, and to a medical system that prioritizes doctors’ interests that wants you to give birth as quickly as possible so the doctor can leave their shift, et cetera.And so, we need to both take women’s pain more seriously and also question where it comes from and whether it’s natural and whether we can do something so that it is not so common.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and you do talk about, in that regard about how many doctors will push for women to [00:16:00] have, cesarean sections.Much more than they used to. And that, that, that does seem to be driven not necessarily by medical needs of the women, right? Or the people. Mm-hmm.WEISS: Yeah. Not just cesarean sections, but a lot of, inducing labor, for instance, Pitocin, which actually makes contractions more painful. episiotomies where there’s a cut made between the vagina and the anus are still sometimes done without consent, though less so now there are a lot of interventions that are done, like to prioritize the hospital’s interests or even they might, may not see it that way.It may be to be very careful. And, just, but the thing is, there is some research showing if a hospital has more than a 15% C-section rate, like there’s actually more maternal deaths and more complications. So there is this. Almost this patronizing view, like that women can’t give birth on their own or that they can’t give birth with just the amount of interventions that they decide on.And that actually backfires because like our bodies do have an innate wisdom and there is a lot of overprotection, excessive interventions that it can actually lead to more pain.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and I mean it, but it is a balancing act as you’re saying earlier, that that pain is real. but, it doesn’t perhaps always necessarily have to be something that happens.Sometimes people cause it. And yeah, I mean, so there, there’s, now you, talk about, some of your own experiences in other women in regards to pain that, that. had been sort of forced on you and, others. So maybe talk about one of the [00:18:00] experiences of your own first, if you would please.And then maybe we can talk about some of the other ones.WEISS: So, I have not had. The experience specifically of having pain normalized. Thankfully, I never had super painful periods. I haven’t given birth. I did not have painful sex ever. What I did have, as I said, was the normalization of Lessness. It started off that my first sexual experiences I was on, Zoloft and then No Prozac, and then Zoloft. And I had like a lot of trouble orgasming, especially with a partner. And I was, convinced because of magazine articles and whatnot that the female orgasm is elusive. my college nurse just said like, have you tried a vibrator?Which yes, like vibrators are great, but if it’s necessary there could be something else going on. And I just, Realized it, it wasn’t just the medication, but it was also just this culture where we prioritize men’s sexual desires where it’s not normalized for women to speak up and communicate in the bedroom.There are a lot of societal factors that make it seem normal if women do not orgasm. And and I realized that’s not the case at all. It doesn’t have to be the case. Like if a woman is empowered, if she is healthy and is empowered, then she should be orgasming like just as much and as easily as any male partner that she has.And there, yeah, and my experience, also my health journey, didn’t quite line up with the ideas about menstrual pain being normal because it wasn’t specifically reproductive, but I have a complicated array of issues due to chronic Lyme disease and was told a lot. If you have symptoms that [00:20:00] a, a shit ton of things were attributed to anxiety that like happens to a lot of women. Like, especially if you have symptoms like anxiety, heart, or not anxiety, like insomnia, heart palpitations, muscle twitches, like things that can be symptoms of anxiety. I was just told, like again and again, I don’t know what it is, must be anxiety, maybe like go on psychiatric medication.And then, I was finally diagnosed with Lyme disease and there’s like a lot of, there’s a lot of conditions that women get told are anxiety or depression and, that’s sort of a separate but related issue that we’re, well yeah. we’re not really being helped. We’re just, we’re still, it’s not necessarily normalized, but it’s also not really looked into or taken seriously.Suzannah’s personal health journeySHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I mean, I would say that. That, is a normalization of pain, but more of a, psychological pain that’s saying, well, you just, you, have anxiety. Like there’s get over it. That chill out or whatever like that. That’s what I mean in the sense that, people, it, it’s too easy I think for a lot of, I mean, it is naturally easy for a lot of doctors to kind of go for something like that instead of trying to explore something from a either medical or psychological standpoint that they may not be as familiar with.Especially in regards to if it’s things that, that women are, that, because it’s harder for them to understand it because even, even now I think within the, a lot of the medical schools and the literature, there’s just not as much focus. and with the Trump administration, they’re, they now put in a formal rule, With the NNIH, that research proposals that have the word women in them are going to get extra scrutiny because we can’t have [00:22:00] that.WEISS: Yeah. Like even if someone is experiencing anxiety or depression, then it should be looked into why, like, do you have trauma? Is something hurting you? Like it shouldn’t just be brushed off either way.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and I mean, thinking about, some of these other things that are often associated with anxiety or whatever, you, also do talk about the, this idea that is, is super common and really destructive, that, women are more emotionally or hormonally driven than men.When in fact, as you note. A lot of the times when women are accused of being more emotional or hormonal driven is actually, when, when there is less, more, there are fewer hormones, especially estrogen. Right?WEISS: Yeah. There was a famous quote by Glorias that like, it’s around women’s periods when they’re considered to be most hormonal, that they actually have the ma most testosterone.So then like, what does that say about men? it’s just illogical. And we could also say about men. there’s a sperm si genesis cycle that takes, I forget the exact number, like a few months I think. So their hormones shift. There’s also a sort of day-to-day shifts in hormones that men’s testosterone often rises in the morning.So are we going to say, man, men can’t serve office? because they may need to make morning meetings when their testosterone’s high and they’re angry. Like, we could make the argument for men just as much as we could for women, but we don’t do that.Cognition as an embodied actSHEFFIELD: and then also you talk about post-menopausal women as well, having having less estrogen than men their age.Right. Which I thought that part, when I read that, I thought that was, I, hadn’t heard that one before, but it’s, kind of funny. But, very true. obviously,WEISS: yeah, that was [00:24:00] from the podcast. You’re Not Broken by Dr. Kelly Casperson. She and I communicated about that. Yeah, there’s a lot of illogical assumptions about hormones.because hormones are so complex. Each hormone has many different roles depending on a lot of things, where it is in the body, what receptors it’s targeting, et cetera. And so it’s just really hard to make any argument. I also talked to, one researcher who was saying basically. It’s not even that clear that hormones are what causes PMS.She was actually saying that, it’s more likely inflammation and inflammation can be influenced by things like diet, lifestyle, hou household chemicals, all the problems that I brought up as causes of period pain. So I think that’s really interesting. There are also certain countries, like in Asia where women don’t report PMS, so that’s another thing we think of as natural that might not actually be.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and, yeah, just the, the idea of it becoming, as a kind of a psychosomatic cultural product. you do talk about that as well, that, as, because I mean, the idea of PMS, that was a pretty recent invention term. And so as knowledge of that term became more common.People saying, oh, well she has PMS or I have PMS. That obviously, probably is going to increase a aware, the, diagnosis of that, if you will, or the, self-diagnosis.WEISS: And again, it’s not to gaslight women, like a lot of people do have that experience, and I’m sure there always is a physical reason, whether it is a hormonal thing, whether it is inflammation, whether it is another factor can be an underlying condition that’s undiagnosed mental or physical that is being exacerbated at that time.It’s [00:26:00] important. We don’t gaslight women about it. And it’s also actually the way women are treated. It’s if women are discriminated against because of their periods taught to dread their periods, that is also another factor. So it’s like important to simultaneously hold, yes, it’s happening. And also the reasons why it may not be so inevitable, it may be something preventable.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Well, and that, yeah, trying to make sure to keep these, a series of ideas that are in some sense conflicting. I mean, that is a. A theme in the book that you are, you do develop repeatedly that, people have to stop assuming that only one thing is always true one thing or the other.That in fact, we’re complex beings and we shouldn’t reduce people to such deterministic categories.WEISS: I just think we need to find a way to get back to the Garden of Eden where just everyone’s happy in their bodies. I think psychedelics are the way.SHEFFIELD: Well, okay. Well, tell, us more what you mean by that.Go ahead. Go for it.WEISS: I’m speaking mostly from personal experience. I had no idea my body’s capability for pleasure until I started working with plant medicine and having all these experiences like touch free orgasm and vaginal orgasm and breast orgasm and that I like didn’t think were actually possible.There’s something about them that just restores your body to its natural state or opens your body up to pleasure. I’m not sure what it was I, what it is. I would love to see more research. I think it almost just like makes us more open and receptive and definitely heals the body at the core level. And I also noticed a difference in things like I mean in my physical health through my work with plant medicine.So I just think that’s something I’m half joking, but I think it’s something worth researching.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. [00:28:00] Well, yeah, I think it is because, I mean, from my view in my view consciousness is, sort of the constant amalgamation of our, neurons in our body, in our brains. because we have, many millions of neurons in our bodies that are outside of our brains.And how our self model is constructed and our, and what that means in terms of pleasure that’s people in a lot of ways it’s happenstance that people, may not be aware of a pleasurable sensation because they just never experienced it through whatever circumstance they had developed a model of pleasure.And so in some sense psychedelics can help you experience those other that other variety of sensation that you may not have gone for it. But, obviously they can be harmful for people as well, and I think we should, make sure to say that because especially if you have family members with schizophrenia or something like that, there can be severe damage that people have from those things as well.All right. So, so, but you just keeping in this general theme though, like the, idea of the going back to the, elusive female orgasm, that’s I mean, for a long time people didn’t even believe that it existed. So, and, and, we can kind of see that, for instance, looking at the Bible that within the Hebrew Bible, there’s no prohibition on, women.En engaging in sexual activity with women. because they didn’t even think that was possible. Wow. And so, but it, I think it goes back to the idea of what you were saying that, women were not believed historically, at least in the, Western canon, so much of it to have any sort of sexual nature.And [00:30:00] that really did that idea propagated even as medical science, detached itself from religious belief and tried to develop its own ontology of the body.WEISS: I do sometimes wonder if, people didn’t believe in women’s capacity for pleasure or if they’re just in denial. One of my interview subjects, I really liked her quote, her name was Ayelet.She was talking about ecstatic childbirth, and I asked her something about the medical system and whether, the way in which childbirth is forced into this controlling healthcare system that sort of deprives women of decision making, whether that reflects an overall distrust of women, the same distrust that leads to restrictive abortion laws.And she said, I don’t know if people, if men in charge distrust women or if they actually trust women too much. Like if they’re afraid of how trustworthy women are when it comes to their own bodies and how powerful women are. And I, really like that idea because I don’t think it’s that people don’t see women’s sexuality or women’s power, or women’s beauty or women’s light.I think it’s that it is impossible not to see, and that’s why we have all these restrictions against women standing in their power. And I, just think that’s a more empowering stance to take that like women have always had power that’s just been undeniable, especially in the childbirth process and in sex and like, and that is why we have these, opposing myths.It’s, like to, like I said about Eve, there was this idea of women as super sexual, so we needed to create all these beliefs to restrict that. There, there’s always been an understanding of women’s potential. It’s just like something we’re afraid of for some reason. I’m not sure why. Maybe because of paternity anxiety and this idea that we could, have babies with different men and can’t track who our [00:32:00] children belong to.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and you do I was actually, I’m glad you, mentioned that because I was going to ask you about that, that, you do talk about the idea of, that perhaps monogamy arose, or at least female monogamy arose from that imperative because people didn’t want to raise somebody else’s child, or men didn’t want to raise somebody else’s child.and, when we look at our, closest animal relatives the, where they have a, the, that have a more sort of democratic social structure, the Bonobos, they, this idea doesn’t really exist for them. And, I don’t know. it’s interesting to think about it and I’m, glad you do talk about it.So, but can you, expand on that a little bit here if you would please.WEISS: Yeah, so one theory about why we restrict women’s sexuality and reproduction so much is that there has been since agricultural times this effort to track who the father of every child is so that we, they know how to pass down property.And that is something that you see in the Bible, like this whole line of father so and so, we got so and so. We got so and so. And it also became, a way to track who belonged to which tribe. And so there’s another book that I recommend Sex Ed Dawn, that talks about how this fucked us up as a species and how in the hunter gatherer days the theory put forth in that book is that actually women’s sexuality was not restricted and it didn’t matter so much who, like there’s evidence of sperm competition, meaning that there is in semen, a chemical that kills other sperm, and there’s also the shape of a penis like scoops out other men’s sperm, which suggests actually women were having multiple partners.[00:34:00]At like very close together. And there are also some tribes where it’s normal for a baby to have multiple men taking care of them. because they actually don’t even know who the father is. And that just sounds like a much healthier, happier society where there isn’t this obsession with controlling women’s sexuality with, is the bride a virgin?And it’s more, just about allowing the sperm competition to take place. And like, everyone’s kind of non-monogamous and kind of slutty and, we just, everyone, takes care of the kids.Contradictions in male attitudes toward female sexualitySHEFFIELD: Well, and, it is an interesting thing to think about, I think in our current moment as well, because, there’s I mean, as people are surely aware, by now there’s a lot of angry, men out there who are straight.Who are well or straight presenting, we’ll say that are, wanting to have more sex with women, but then at the same time also are condemning women who are not monogamous. And it’s like, well, you can’t really do that guys. That if you’re saying that you don’t want women to have sex, but then you complain that they’re having, or that you don’t have sex, it’s like, it’s not really how that works.There is this contradiction, I think, and it’s, and as, but as, women, have, and, which is something you talk about in your first book, that as women have taken more power over their bodies and and sexualities that.Men haven’t adjusted to that. And obviously non-monogamy for women seems to be a pretty readily a ready solution for that. But people are still against, it seems side.WEISS: There is a view, something I’ve encountered a lot is there’s a view of women who are open about their sexuality as [00:36:00] indiscriminating as, having low self-worth.And it is an interesting contradiction that it’s like men want women to be sexually liberated in the sense of sexually available, but they don’t, and by men I mean like unevolved men, like red pillar men. I think that like manosphere men, like they, they want women, to be sexually available, but they don’t really, when confronted with a woman who’s really sexually empowered, they’re afraid and they feel intimidated and they feel like she, if she is very sexually empowered, but she is discriminating then and she is like, I am super sexual, but I don’t want to have sex with you, then it’s considered the ultimate insult and it’s like a lot of men want a sexually liberated woman until they’re confronted with what that actually is.Gender non-conformity and the myth of brokennessSHEFFIELD: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, they, want a woman to be liberated, but only for them. Not for herself and, not for somebody else that she chooses to be involved with. Yeah. And, there, but there’s also, this tendency also does kind of wrap around on the other side, that for people who don’t conform to gender binaries that, there’s this, and which a sense which you talk about in the book is, people that they’re broken, that there’s something wrong with them.even though historically we can see, like from within the. the Hindu tradition of Hera, and, two spirits, like this, the idea that heteronormativity is ingrained in humanity is just obviously not true from a scientific standpoint or, an anthropology standpoint. But this myth really does persist.And it’s, and I think in the many ways, the modern reactionary movement has organized itself around this in so many ways. like they, they are obsessed with hunting down trans people who exist in public [00:38:00] and, try to participate in society where whether it’s, I mean, even in the case of like sports the president of the NCAA had said that out of more than 550,000 athletes, there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in his entire organization.So here we were having this national panic. around pe fewer people than could fit on the, on your fingers if you’re counting like obviously this is not a national concern. It doesn’t affect hardly anyone. But they want, but they, really psychologically want to believe in this idea that, you must conform to the, heterosexual gender norm.WEISS: Yeah, that was important to point out. because I talk a lot about women feeling broken for very, for being women basically. And there’s also this feeling of brokenness. I think a lot of trans, non-binary, two-spirit gen, gender non-conforming, et cetera, people can relate to, especially I talk about intersex people whose bodies don’t fit the typical definition of male or female and how they’re.Sometimes surgically operated on without consent, often when it’s medically unnecessary and even medically harmful to look quote unquote normal. And so this, that there is a big movement to stop that, but they’re still felt, they’re still made to feel as if their bodies are broken or, trans people because of this, two sex model.This idea that you have a male mind or a female mind, or a male body, or a female body, and you can’t have a mix of both or something in between. It’s as if everyone who doesn’t fit those categories has some kind of defect. And it’s actually the social stigma that’s worse than any physical problem that actually exists.And if we remove the stigma, life will be a lot easier for all those populations.SHEFFIELD: [00:40:00] it would, and, but it would also be easier for people who are not in those populations as well. And I think that’s something. that should be talked about more because, there’s I, just as a, cultural character since King of the Hill came back as a show, you’ve got the character of Bobby Hill, the son, and I don’t know if you ever watched it, so pardon me if you have, but you know, Bobby Hill, the son of Hank Hill he’s generally, presenting as, a boy.And, but, and, he’s interested in girls, but at the same time, he doesn’t have all the same stereotypical, male traits. So like, he likes a purse. He has a purse and other things like that. And, people can, people have the right to like stuff, like, there’s nothing wrong with you if you are liking things that you know, you are as socially assigned.Gender says that you shouldn’t like. whether it’s, a boy who likes pink, or just, or girls who like to play with, army figures or whatever. Like we sh people have the right to be however they want to be, and, experiencing life in the way that, that feels good.Like, that’s who you shouldn’t be against that. I think even if you are not in, in the, in the, a gender or a sexual minority,WEISS: I agree. Like nobody, nobody perfectly fits in. I also talk about research showing most people have what’s called mosaic brains, that some parts of their brain are more typical of what’s considered male, or some are more typical of what’s considered female.Like most of our brains are a mix, and so nobody is really, like, if we’re going by social stereotypes, nobody is 100% masculine or feminine. So it’s just important to normalize that for everybody.SHEFFIELD: Absolutely. And I think, one of the [00:42:00] other I don’t know, just like, one of these other basic things that, that should be talked about more and I’m glad that you do talk about it in the book, but also you, and is that, that everybody has, inner traumas or past trauma experiences and that also does impact a lot of how they see themselves and how they see, the world and that, and in a lot of ways, these unresolved traumas especially are kind of at the root of, Of issues that people have that may manifest in medical or psychological ways. And that and that’s something that you talk about pretty much at length and, also you do outside of, the, of your book as well. You want to talk about that if you would?Trauma and its physical manifestationsWEISS: Yeah. So when we talk about what is actually contributing to many women’s pain, there is a connection between emotional trauma and physical pain.There are many different connections. anxiety and depression are related to physical symptoms like headaches. They can affect the immune system trauma. The book, the Body Keeps the Score explains this. That trauma can actually weaken your immune system or cause a autoimmune condition where your body is essentially attacking Its.Self and there is some research showing, different reproductive health issues are related to sexual trauma. The connection, it’s not exactly clear why. Some of it could be, if you have trauma around your genitals, your womb, your pelvis, you may not seek care as much because it is triggering to go to the doctors.Some of it could actually be physical trauma. Some of it could be just emotions get stored in the body. I interviewed one woman named Josephina Bashau, who talked about her journey with Prec cervical cancer, and, she believes it’s related to having been molested as a child and that it had to do with the [00:44:00] shame and trauma she experienced from that.And it’s not clear exactly like how those two things are related, but there is a. Research showing those who have been sexually abused are more likely to develop cervical cancer. And she talks about actually how studying sacred sexuality, and this is where it gets really woo. But for, her, that was a real thing that a big part of her healing process was healing her relationship to her body.And I do believe when we love our bodies, we take better care of them. And that does promote health. When we, when we believe that our bodies are valuable, that they, valuable is a strange word, giving my last book, like deconstructed that idea of a woman having quote unquote value. But when we believe, like, that our bodies are worth taking care of, that has an enormous impact on our health.When we believe that our bodies. Are sacred or however you would put it, that they are just something to appreciate that does affect how you treat yourself and a lot of women. not just in terms of being sexually harassed or assaulted, but just being told, your body isn’t good enough, you’re too fat, your boobs aren’t big enough, et cetera.Like this body hatred, I believe is related to the epidemic of women who experience chronic illness. And yeah, I think I mentioned, I wanted to plug my psychotherapy services. I like working with people with mysterious health issues and seeing if we can pinpoint the connection between physical and mental health.because there are many ways in which they intersect.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and, you also talk about PTSD being linked to, a number of other chronic dis I mean autoimmune disorders as well.WEISS: Yeah. PTSD and, childhood. A childhood adverse events [00:46:00] such as, sexual, physical, or psychological abuse are also connected to someone’s likelihood of developing many different illnesses.So there, there are many theories about why, but the bottom line is that like, if you’re not treated well, that is going to have an impact on your body. And that is why it’s so important that instead of normalizing women’s health problems, we create a world that treats women better and women will be healthier.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and, it is really important to have that, focus. Now just to circle back to something you, you, said though, like the, idea though of, normalization of rape culture also, that does have an impact on that as well. can you tell us what you meant by that in the book?WEISS: Yeah, a lot of women are chronically traumatized, even if a woman doesn’t experience a rape. By the standard definition, if you live within rape culture, if you see media image constantly of women being objectified, of women being dehumanized, if you are cat called on the street a lot, if you are constantly having men try to push your boundaries, that contributes to this feeling of unsafety in your body and it makes your nervous system hypervigilant.It can actually, and when your nervous system is hypervigilant. That in of itself can lead to a whole host of health problems. because like your body needs to be in a parasympathetic state to really heal. So if you’re kind of always in fight or flight your body, your immune system is going to be suppressed.You’re going to be more susceptible to chronic illness. Your body isn’t going to heal as easily. And I think we live in a world where a lot of women are hypervigilant and that’s also going to affect our [00:48:00] sexual experiences. It’s hard to orgasm or let go or like enjoy sex. If you are monitoring the scene, like, okay, is he going to push my boundaries?Is everything going to be okay? and. If you, and it also impacts mental health. And I talk about, a disorder called borderline personality disorder that is more commonly diagnosed in women, though. it may actually be as common in men, but it’s basically characterized by emotional instability, anger outbursts, self-harm, suicidal ideation, difficulty, kind of push-pull dynamics in relationships.And a lot of research shows that’s related to trauma and may actually be misdiagnosed complex, PTSD, which is when you are exposed to low grade trauma or high grade trauma, like throughout a period of time and. That I think is very, underdiagnosed complex, PTSD, and that’s something a lot of women may experience just by being criticized, growing up by living in a culture that just doesn’t take women seriously.I think that is a big factor in women’s physical and mental health problems and sexual problems is this low grade trauma and, any oppress group that we’re constantly exposed to. Mm-hmm.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. Well, and another thing that is kind of related to that also is that while, or I guess but it’s on the opposite side, is that you, have a chapter later on in the book called Sexy But Not Sexual that examines the idea that, that sexiness or sexuality is.It’s confined to people who have, are a certain age or a certain weight and that this is extremely damaging. And I, and this is damaging also to, men as well, obviously that, men, a lot of male sexuality, especially in pop culture, is presented as just kind of disgusting. And, you talked about that in your other book as [00:50:00] well.But you know, like within, this context especially with age, that’s where you focus on that, that women’s bodies are, have no sexual value. And that a lot of women as they get older, become invisible and as many have said or they feel that way,‘Sexy but not sexual’WEISS: yeah, there, there’s a lot of bias in the medical system for women who have sexual or reproductive issues that often their sexiness is prized over their sexuality.And what I mean by that is, for instance, There are many examples. I interviewed one woman who had endometriosis and it caused painful sex, and the doctors didn’t really take her seriously until her boyfriend attested that she couldn’t have sex. There’s also some, birth control is one example of something where I think we prioritize men’s sexual desires over women’s, women are kind of, many women think that if they want to have sex, they, need to be on birth control.And some women experience side effects, not all. Some actually like, have positive side effects, but some have depression, lower sex drive, even painful sex, and they feel like it’s their duty to be on birth control so that they can have sex ultimately for immense pleasure, because that’s. Women having painful sex is seen as less important than just men being able to come inside you without a condom.And there I also talk about a procedure called leaps that removes prec cervical or precancerous cervical cells. And how many women are reporting it actually interferes with their sexual function. There are horror stories like some women saying they could not orgasm afterward, and doctors, it’s still taking a while for doctors to take it seriously.because there isn’t a ton of research yet. There is some research showing it happens, but, we just live within this larger medical system where women’s sexual complaints aren’t taken seriously. And we also [00:52:00] see that with antidepressants. I wasn’t even told that they could have sexual side effects.And that ties into this larger culture where like if a woman can be sexy and offer pleasure to a man, that is seen as more important than the woman having pleasure herself. And that ties to aging, as you mentioned, because women’s, often older women’s sexuality and sexual complaints aren’t taken seriously.They may be told to just use lube if they’re having sexual pain or dryness. And actually a lot of older women have a sexual awakening later in life because they realize their body may work differently. But it’s a chance to explore other forms of sexuality, to explore sexuality, outside penetration, to have a deeper connection with a partner.And so that’s also something, that needs more attention is the needs of post-menopausal women, specifically their sexual needs that are often erased.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. I’m curious, what you think in, this regard in terms of just like cultural output. Because I, personally think that, we’re seeing more, not, enough, but we’re seeing more films and television that are, a, admitting the reality that people have sex, in their seventies and eighties and, that’s a good thing and that they shouldn’t feel ashamed for having desire or, seeing themselves as sexual.And, we’re still not there, but you know, as much as we should be. But I think there has been some improvement, but I don’t know what you.WEISS: I think so there’s, I interviewed a woman named Joan Price, who’s an activist, a sex educator who’s older and has written books about this topic. And she said actually, she’s talked to other women who say that after menopause and after their children leave the house is actually a time [00:54:00] when they live more for themselves.And it’s actually not, not being like considered an ideal object can actually be a positive thing because they realize their sexuality should be for themselves. And it’s not that they can be an object to someone but there is this greater sense of agency and empowerment and living for oneself that arises.And there, there is research showing like a lot of women’s sexuality and, men’s as well gets. Even better with age. And I, think we need more resources and education on that, but I can recommend Joan Price’s books as a good starting point for anyone who wants more information on that.SHEFFIELD: Mm-hmm. Yeah.Awesome. Well, and to, toward the latter part of the book, you do talk about also trying to get people to reorient how they see medical functions like Well, I don’t like how I said that. and toward the, latter part of the book, you also do talk about encouraging women to try to, get beyond, the sexuality or, the body as this painfully destined or non pleasurable thing.To, as you put it to, to live orgasmically, what do you, mean by that?WEISS: That’s something that I learned from my mentor, Josephina Bahr, who’s interviewed in the book. She talks a lot about living orgasmically or the orgasmic life, which, or the way she called it was life is one giant orgasm.So she talked, she talks about things like, drinking coffee can be ecstatic or just going outside and feeling the breeze against you can be ecstatic, can even be orgasmic. And that’s a difficult concept to explain to some people [00:56:00] who haven’t done psychedelics. But it’s like, if you. I actually like to teach people an exercise.Sometimes if you can tune into the sensation in your genitals and just kind of like breathe into that sensation, and this is woo, but often you can actually feel even without sexual stimulation, even when you’re not having sex. There’s always pleasure coursing through your body, and there’s an exercise I teach people where if you like.Breathe into that area. You can imagine it expanding like a balloon and you can sort of feel like your whole body has lit up and you can feel like there are pleasure receptors all over your body. And there are many people who experience pleasure or even orgasms from stimulation of parts of the body.You would not expect like the ears or the breasts more commonly, or even the lips. And the more you can develop body awareness, body attunement and just general presence, you can experience things like taking a shower as orgasmic, just the feeling of the soap and the water against your skin.a lot of people are living in kind of a dissociated state where they’re outside their bodies and they’re not experiencing a pleasurable life on a daily basis. And I think meditation is helpful for that. I think different. I think breath work is really helpful for that. anything that cultivates presence within the body.And yeah, a lot of us just aren’t living and, then that translates into the bedroom that every sensa sensation feels more intense and a lot of people aren’t living up to their sexual potential because they’re so crushed under their work. They’re glued to their computers. They’re not taking the time to do things that are pleasurable in their bodies.Even if that’s, just like going outside and putting your feet on the ground or eating food that feels enjoyable. All of these things add up to a more, more orgasmic sex and a [00:58:00] more orgasmic life. And according to many women better childbirth experiences as well, because they just have greater body awareness.Mindfulness and body awarenessSHEFFIELD: Yeah. So it’s, being able to experience pleasure or it’s see it where it is more and. In your own experience is a way of deriving greater enjoyment from life. And that is a process that would also affect your sex life as well. That it would make it everything, if everything feels better than so would that, right?WEISS: That’s always what I teach people at first who are struggling with arousal or orgasm is practice mindfulness in your daily life. Practice noticing the texture and taste of the food you eat. Practice simple things like putting on lotion and noticing how it feels on your body because that kind of awareness is going to help you in the bedroom more than any specific technique, just to actually fully feel like you could use a vibrator with a higher setting.And that’s also valid. But there are also ways to feel more with less just by being more, body aware.SHEFFIELD: Okay. Cool. all right, well, so, for people who want to keep up with you, Suzannah, tell us your recommendations.WEISS: You can follow me on Twitter. Suzannah Weiss, S-U-Z-A-N-A-N-N-A-H-W-E-I-S-S. that’s also my website, susanna wise.com.My Instagram was sadly taken down, because they’re kind of anti-sex on there, but if it comes back, you can find me, Suzannah Wise. WI, SE and, yeah, I offer sex therapy and psychotherapy now and sex coaching. So if you are interested in that, please go to my website.SHEFFIELD: All right. Sounds good.[01:00:00] Thanks for being here again.WEISS: Thank you.SHEFFIELD: Alright, so that is the program for today. I appreciate everybody 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 thank you very much for your support.And if you can’t afford to subscribe right now, I understand that. But, we do have free subscriptions as well that you can go to patreon.com/discover Flux or you can go to flux.community, where you can subscribe on substack. So whichever one you prefer, you’ll get the same content over there.And, thanks very much and if you’re watching on YouTube, please click the like and subscribe button so you can get notified whenever we post a new episode. Thanks a lot, I’ll see you next time. This is a public episode. 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Episode Summary One year after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what to do for the next time around and what to do in the 2026 midterm elections as control of Congress is once again at stake.There were a lot of people offering advice to the Democrats in this regard, and certainly the most well-funded of those people are the ones who say that the party has become too liberal and has to modify its stances to become more popular and resonant with public opinion.And at the same time, there are people on the further left side of the coalition arguing that the Democrats have become too conservative and that they have alienated people who want a more radical change in society to fix things that are broken, and not to step back at all on defending abortion access or trans rights.Each side of this intra-left debate offers worthy points, but both groups tend to understate the immense effect that media have on people’s political opinions. That is the central topic of my new e-book, What Republicans Know, so please do help me out and purchase it if you haven’t yet.Someone else’s work you should consider in this regard is our guest on today’s program: Dave Karpf is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, and he’s written several books on the role of media and public opinion.Last week, he wrote an article in the New Republic about a new report from a group called WelcomePAC, which argued that Democrats need to become more moderate, but which also largely ignored how many people don’t know about candidates’ policy views.The video of this episode 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--Free excerpt from “What Republicans Know”--How much do political party elites know about their own voters?--Reactionaries built an infrastructure to attack democracy, their opponents must do the same to defend it--Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them--Democratic losses stem from their failure to communicate--Trump’s insult comic shtick and the right’s new media shock troopsAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:01 — Policies are far from the only thing that matters to voters17:03 — Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantage through inaction22:11 — Political parties need permanent infrastructure34:55 — Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?43:20 — The perils of thinking that polling alone is political science53:11 — 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: And joining me now is Dave Karp. Hey Dave. Welcome back to Theory of Change.Dave Karpf: Okay. Thanks. Having me again.Matthew Sheffield: So, you had a great thread on the WelcomePAC report, which I have to say is when I read that, I instantly was like, oh man, these people like “Welcome Back, Kotter,” the seventies TV series.Dave Karpf: It does.Matthew Sheffield: So, but you know, in fairness to them, I, do want to say that there are some things, there’s a bunch of stuff in this report that’s high-quality and that does match established, well-confirmed political science. And this is, in my view, the highest-quality, more centrist-leaning document that we’ve seen since 2024.Do you agree with that?Dave Karpf: Yeah, I mean the, when I opened this, the first thing that I noticed, they, they have a list of people that they’re thinking and it includes a number of political scientists who I know and deeply respect. It also includes a [00:04:00] number of people who are immediate red flags for me, Nate Silver is on this thing, like Nate Silver was a great person to talk to five, 10 years ago. Lately he’s mostly seems to be playing poker.So there were a couple of immediate red flags, but also there were a number of people who I was like, okay, if you are, like, if you’re talking to Aaron Strauss and Chris Warshaw. I’m interested in what you have to say. And I think they took seriously that they wanted to gather the data and see what it told them.I have some things we can get into about what data they decided to look at and what they didn’t decide to gather. But I think they, at least took it seriously.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and there were a couple of other red flags for me with a, like they cited James Carville and their title page and a Republican pollster. How does that make you look better? I, don’t think that it does guys.But nonetheless there are some points in here that are true and like one of the, things that I try to do with my writing and podcast [00:05:00] is to, show the various factions of the, left that, nobody is a hundred percent correct in, understanding elections.Like each side actually has viewpoints that are true and each one has ideas that are false. And so one of the, there are a couple of things that are true in this report is that irregular voters are not ideologically committed compared to people who are regular voters. And, that’s, I, that’s, something that I think people on the progressive side might struggle with that concept or accepting That seems like.Dave Karpf: Yeah. And I, the thing that I tell my students at the beginning of every semester is, the answer to any question worth asking is, well, it’s complicated. And as political scientist, that’s where I feel comfortable sort of exploring the complication as a pragmatic strategist, well, it’s complicated isn’t a good answer, right?So the hard questions of things like, should the Democrats try to nominate more centrist or more progressive candidates, [00:06:00] what people would really like is there to be a clean, easy answer to that. And that includes progressives. Who would really like to think that, when you nominate a bold progressive, they’re likely to win.And what the data shows is, well, it’s complicated. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a centrist. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a bold progressive. In either case, it would kind of be nice to have somebody just dripping with charisma and lacking in scandals. But those people are few and far between, and so it’s all complicated and that like that is, I think some of the use of a report like this is sort of reminding us that the simple story you’d like to tell yourself is also not quite true.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other things that they noted in here that is true is that political donors or activists tend to have more polarized opinions than the general public or even their own co partisans in their party. Now the Democrats have a much wider range of opinions compared to Republicans.And so that makes things a little more difficult as well, in [00:07:00] particular for them. And, and so the, these are real challenges that the Democratic Party, there are unique challenges that the Democratic party has that do make things harder for them compared to Republicans and I, think that’s fair. We have to say that.Dave Karpf: we do the, bit that I want to quibble on there, because when I read that passage from them, I was annoyed. Is.​If we start from the premise that politics is complicated and the answer to everything is, well, it’s complicated. Part of what that sets up is like, I think it’s okay for your party elites to be more interested in some issue portfolios than the mass public. If the reason they’re more interested in them, I’m thinking particularly with climate change, isn’t because they’re, died in the wool I ideologues, but because they’re looking at it and having spent a lot of time wrestling with it, they say, well, no, this is really bad and we as policymakers really need to care.Right. Historically, foreign policy is something that the masses [00:08:00] mostly don’t pay attention to. And so it’s really important to have people in government who do pay attention to it, even if they’re going to be out of step with the masses. Because the masses aren’t tuning in. So to the ex, like when you have elites that are out of step with the party base or the mass public that they want to get to vote for them, we’re not out out of step with them.Because they have sort of different ide, ideological priors. That’s a thing that we want to remind ourselves of and sort of, sort of check our instincts. But when they’re out of step, because they’re more well informed, because they’re the people who are actually paid to develop expertise and wrestle with the complications.Like I, I think it’s important to remember that like we run elections and, win elections in order to govern, and a lot of the stuff that goes into governing is in fact going to be unpopular just because governance is complicated and a lot of it sucks.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, another issue where that’s very relevant what you just said is, the, the issue of democracy, quote unquote. So, the average person, I don’t [00:09:00] expect them to care about political systems and, the, Overton window and, political theory like, oh, that’s, they have better things to do in their lives than obsess over those types of things that you and I are thinking about.And, so, but yeah, like it, the doesn’t mean that they don’t matter and in fact, argue, I think we could say that climate change and democracy are probably the the most. Important issues from an objective standpoint because they determine whether you have a future of the polity.Dave Karpf: Right.And also if, the party, I’m particularly annoyed on climate both because I come out of the environmental movement, but also because Matt Yglesias keeps on beating this drum and I just think he’s wrong. Like Yglesias seems to have concluded that climate is a loser issue. Democrats should stop talking about it.Just assume that some technology will save us. because it, it’s a loser, so don’t do it. And A, I disagree with him that’s a, the route that they should take. [00:10:00] But B, I would also say pragmatically, if you just let climate change keep getting worse in order to hopefully win some more elections in the near term, you’re also going to end up living in a hotter, less safe, less stable world in the future.Where it is difficult as the governing party to keep on getting reelected. Like the inattentive public is just going to blame you when things go wrong. So you should take governance choices that in the medium and long term, hopefully make it less likely for things to go wrong. Otherwise, what’s the point of democracy to begin with?And I like, I just think some of these elector editorialists or the, like, they’re calling the missiles populists now, like I, I think they seem to have forgotten that like, you don’t need to, you don’t need to campaign in, prose. You can campaign in poetry, but if you’re going to be trying to win elections, you then actually need to do the policy work that leads to a more stable and hopefully prosperous nation.Otherwise when you do win, you’re going to be living, you’re going to be governing in such a manner that like they kick you [00:11:00] out next time.Policies are far from the only thing that matters to votersMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And that I think was one of the critical flaws in this report is that they, have a absurd viewpoint about that the public knows about issues and cares about them. And, and, the reality is, I mean, Kamala Harris, she, she ran her campaign and her policy positions to be maximally popular,Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Like the people who’ve, some of the people who were financing this report were also financing and directing the Kamala Harris campaign. And so like we tried their idea and we’ve tried their idea for the past several decades and, it actually hasn’t worked. And, like the thing with Joe Biden in 2020, the, problem with this, popularist approach to me is that it’s not actually popularist, it’s not popular.And like, and Trump won [00:12:00] because people, oh, sorry. Biden beat Trump in 2020 because Trump was really horrible and, we had a, he was a disaster. Like it wasn’t that people thought Joe Biden was great, and his policies were awesome.And that’s the problem with these guys is that they don’t like, they, it’s Bill Clinton won because of Ross Perot. Obama won not because of his strategies, but because he was a really good candidate who spoke really well. And so the, problem that Democrats have is that you’ve got this consultant class that sort of glommed onto these two candidates. Like, what, happened to Organizing for America?Nothing. What happened to all of this local movement that they had built that had arose around him? Nothing.Dave Karpf: Yeah, though I, one thing I would add in is. Obama also won because he was running against a Republican after two Republican terms when things were like, we both had foreign wars that had gotten unpopular and the economy imploded. Right? So like there is [00:13:00] historically, there’s what we call sort of like a like a thermostatic or a sort of a back and forth phenomenon where people tend to vote in presidential elections based on their opinion of the incumbent president or incumbent party.And it tends to go back and forth. there’s, no world in which the Democrats win normal elections for the ne for the next like 40 years, like eventually Republican wins. And that it particularly happens once people decide, like in political science we call it, they, call it I think the time for change model.I haven’t looked at thisMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, I was just going to say that. Yeah.Dave Karpf: Yeah. But like, part of why Obama wins, like it helps that he is historically charismatic, but it also helps that he is running against the Republicans after George w Bush’s, like, I think Republican party approval was at like 20 something percent at that point.And John McCain like,Matthew Sheffield: too. Yeah.Dave Karpf: yeah. Like, and you had Hurricane Katrina and then also the great financial crisis. Like, like of course Bane didn’t win that election. I’m pretty sure Kamala Harris could have won under those circumstances too. Like there’s some candidate quality, [00:14:00] but a lot of it’s actually the broader circumstances, which again is why there like, sure go ahead and campaign in poetry, but you need to govern in a manner that makes it less likely that objective conditions suck.Because when objective conditions suck, then inattentive voters will just cast your party out. Assuming we have normal elections, which I hope we have those in 2028, but yh I had another thought. It’s coming back to me. Yeah. Oh, here’s the other thought. There, there’s a turn of phrase that I coined for when I’m cri criticizing the, tech barons, but it’s useful here, I think which is the, reverse Scooby-Doo.Now the reverse Scooby-Doo is when you sort of imagine yourself as the villain in Scooby-Doo and say like, we would’ve gotten away with it, if not for, insert thing. And we see this from the tech barons a lot where like, like crypto, like, Ava for a long time has like insisted that the entire economic system is about to collapse in six months and Bitcoin will rise.If it doesn’t happen, then it is, [00:15:00] the government’s fault for interfering. And so it’s like his, it, creates sort of a pressure release valve where he can loudly predict this and people can listen to him. Then when it doesn’t happen, he is like, well, no, it was, I like included a reason why, like, I’m not wrong, even though it didn’t happen.And, with these centrist consultants, like they talk a lot in this report about how Democrats need to talk about kitchen table issues. And if they just talk about it, then they will do better. And their evidence is asking the electorate, polling the electorate after the 2024 election and finding the electorate says, yeah, they don’t really talk about kitchen table issues.They’re mostly talking about like, I don’t know, climate and trans people. And so they then say, oh, that must mean that they talk too much about climate and trans people. They just talk different than what happened. But if you do a content analysis, it turns out that Kamala Harris was constantly talking about kitchen table issues.She was not constantly raising trans people, that she was not constantly talking about climate. My God. And so this idea that like, yeah, they tried our thing, but like if you just try it harder next time, like surely it [00:16:00] wasn’t like even though she took our advice when we failed, it’s somebody else’s fault that’s always in there.To me, the lesson here is really the Democratic party does not get to control what people’s impression of the Democratic Party is. This, they, had more control of that 20 or 30 years ago when we still had the broadcast media ecosystem. And you would develop sound bites that would get played on CNN, right?Like there was a, logic of this stuff in the James Carville age that political consultants, including Centrus political consultants, really had figured out. And they know that doesn’t quite work. They don’t really know what’s replaced it. But part of what’s replaced it is social media. The other part of what’s replaced it is like, my God, right-wing billionaires have bought up both all the mainstream media outlets and all the social media outlets.Like the reason why everyone thinks that Democrats talk about trans people all the time is that Fox News and CNN and Politico constantly talk about what are Democrats saying about trans people? Oh, they’re [00:17:00] defending their position instead of throwing ‘em under the bus, or, oh, they threw them under the bus.Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantageDave Karpf: Let’s talk about that like. It th 30 years ago, there were leftists who were like, oh, the, problem is corporate media is controlling everything. And I was actually back then one of those people being like, it’s a little more complicated than that. Like, give him a break, understand the rules of the game and play towards it.And now I find myself saying like, oh no, like Larry Ellison’s son, David just bought CBS and put Perry Weiss in charge and now he’s trying to buy CNN. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and is now saying, no, I’m going to have a very strong hand in what it says and what it does. Like the owners are now making very clear that they have an ideology and the press is only going to print that ideology.And they’re also buying the social media companies. They can rejigger the algorithms. If you follow every word of this report, the Democrats are not going to become known for the things that deciding to win or WelcomePAC wants them to be known for. because no one will hear that. because people aren’t tuning in to watch your stump speeches, they’re not reading the party [00:18:00] platforms, they’re getting incidental knowledge of, the party from what they’re sort of vaguely seeing in the background.And all that is getting set by a bunch of sent billionaires who like Trump or at least want to serve Trump and are buying up all the outlets. Like you gotta compete with that.Matthew Sheffield: You do. Yeah. And and that’s one of the central points in, my new ebook what Republicans know, like, so as from my own, experience in Republican politics they’re just, they have been so much better at politics because, and they have to be because, you, they’re, these reactionary positions are hated by most Americans.Like most Americans want to protect social security, They want to have civil rights. They, they, want have Medicare. They want to have, they, want to have jobs programs, they want to have education, student loans, and, they want all these things and they want to protect the environment.Yes. In fact, they do. And and so they’ve, had to, Republicans had to home or reactionary Republicans after they. After they took over, the party [00:19:00] really had to develop an infrastructure for themselves. And, that’s something that in the US left, that just hasn’t been done.And, it’s because as I have the graph graphs in my, in the book that, like the Republican ecosystem is circular, every piece of it creates new inputs for the next step. So the activists are created by the media. The media created by the parties, funded by the parties, and then the parties are funded by the donors, and the donors come from the activists.And so whereas, and in the democratic side of things, they’re blowing more than half their money on TV ads local TV ads, like, but number one, young adults are not watching local television at all. Like,Dave Karpf: people aren’t watching tele like it is. Only my parents’ generation are watching live television for anything other than dancing with the Stars and live sporting events. Like, no, no one just turns on NBC anymore.[00:20:00]Matthew Sheffield: No. No, they don’t. and then, the wor even worse of this strategy an even worse aspect of this strategy is that many of these local stations are owned by right-wing billionaires. So the Democratic party is literally funding right wing media.That’s what they’re doing. And they’ve been doing it for decades now.Like if you add up all the amounts over the, decades, like just, since Obama, they have given Sinclair Fox and Nexstar more than $1 billion.Dave Karpf: Yeah, And again, I, what stands out to me is like to me, this is a failure of planning for the medium term instead of the short term. Because in the short term, I can understand you need to win an election. If the audience is, if the audience you’re trying to hit is on local television, you gotta go spend on local television.Read them [00:21:00] like go win the election. because that’s going to determine the shape of the next two years. And you do need to do that. The problem is that’s kind of only what they do. Like the, way that I remember sort of coming to this realization since I’ve been in politics and organizing since the nineties like I remember in 1998 people talking after the congressional election about how well we really need to build party infrastructure at the state and local level.And Republicans are doing that. They’re running people for school board. We need to do that too. And everyone agreed like, oh yeah, we should do that. Then 2006, 2008, we’re still having that same conversation as though it’s a new conversation. And even at times, people would launch initiatives and those initiatives would get some funding and they would get some interest.And those initiatives would last like four years, six years, show some results. ButMatthew Sheffield: Dean, actually to hisDave Karpf: yeah, I mean, Howard,Matthew Sheffield: state strategy.Dave Karpf: right, he, like, he did it. So it’s not that we’ve never even tried it, but when we try that, [00:22:00] it doesn’t last for very long because the, impulse to defund that and put all of the money just into the short term thing means that we never build up that media infrastructure.Political parties need permanent infrastructureDave Karpf: We never developed that party infrastructure. Like it just ends up being sort of a hollow party organization and hollow media outlets where like you, every two years they’re like, oh, let’s go find some social media influencers to talk to, like. You need to spend a decade creating a pipeline so you can have your own Ben Shapiros and then eventually like try to have your own real equivalence of like CNN and the Washington Post.Now that the Republicans have bought those too, that requires both a lot of money and a lot of commitment, but also a lot of time and planning up for the medium term or even the long term instead of just thinking, what are we going to do in the next two years?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, it isn’t that there is not the money for this though. That’s the other thing. So, in, in the, between [00:23:00] the, hard campaign direct donations and dark money groups, Kamala Harris had more than $2 billion at her disposal. And the New York Times reported that, she was getting so much money and that they were basically desperate to spend it.So they were just literally buying any random thing that they could, advertising that they could. So they, they blew a million dollars on the Las Vegas sphere advertising and, they did drone shows and, and instead of just giving that money to local parties and say, Hey, this is for you to use for the next four years, any way you see for.Do it, and, and, that’s the kind of time commitment that they need, and the same thing like with, like you mentioned Ben Shapiro, like his Daily Wire website that was funded by Ted Cruz’s top donors, that they were directed to fund it because they had basically maxed out [00:24:00] as much as they wanted to give to him directly.So then the, cruise people were like, Hey, go fund this new daily wire thing. And so they did, and they, and they stuck with it and it workedforhim.Dave Karpf: Part of the difficulty here is. There, there is the money for it if we’re counting what comes in elections. But I think particularly since a lot of that money is small donor money and small donors tend to show up only when there’s an emergency and you need the cavalry, like the lack of like a handful of centi-billionaires.Like I, again, this is a, like a dream from 15 years ago, but one of my dreams 15 years ago was, wow. It would be incredible if some of the old climate activists who went and started clean energy companies, like if they got exceptionally rich, it would be amazing to go to them and say like, Hey, we need money for organizing and trainings.because they would get it because they used to do that work. Like if we could just have more good billionaires who [00:25:00] understood organizing infrastructure and media infrastructure and valued it, then that medium term problem gets more easily solved. Whereas the challenge here is even though there, there’s enough money for it, if you could sort of hand of God a portion of it better, like part of the challenge is that there isn’t as much funding in between election cycles.And that’s where it really hurts that, it’s like, like Michael Bloomberg will fund some stuff, but, and like George Soros will fund some stuff. Pierre Mjr will fund some stuff. But we’re, you’re talking about a handful of names who are usually single digit billion dollars. Bloomberg is double digits, I guess.Like the sheer aggregation of money. Like towards people who were libertarians and so they invested in crypto 15 years ago and have ridden that wave has just made it so that there’s like the funding pie for people with large piles of money who will invest, can invest on a 10 year basis, I think has gotten more and more slanted in a way that just makes me [00:26:00] depressed.Like it’s not that it’s impossible, but like the playing field keeps on getting more tilted while the need to do something about this. Like to, have donors act something in the long term gets more, becomes more of an emergency.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I, and that’s a very realistic and important point to make. But, and it does also indicate though the, need for a more populist rhetorical and policy stance on the part of the party. I mean, and, that, that does, there is a, big difference. Probably the biggest difference between the Republican ecosystem, the democratic ecosystem, is that the Republican donor CL class and activist class they’re not loyal to the party per se. They’re actually loyal to their ideology. And so the Republican party is their vehicle, whereas the people who donate to the Democratic party tend to be donating it to the Democratic party or as [00:27:00] a charity, sort of. I’m helping civil society, so that’s why I’m giving this money. They don’t have a specific, and, this is probably why, these more partisan type groups like Searchlight or like, WelcomePAC that they don’t have, like, they, they’re specifically trying to make almost a, post ideological politics.But that’s not possible. And, I don’t think that they get that. Because, for the people who pay them, that’s what they want. They absolutely seem to want that. But we don’t live in that world and maybe we never did it.Dave Karpf: Yeah. It’s also, I mean, if there’s two things I’ll grant, the snarky thing I’ll say is there’s always going to be money in telling large donors, Hey, like, here is a magic wand. If people just use these phrases or just elect these proper candidates, then we will all be saved. I’m going to share these [00:28:00] insights with you.You are so smart, you’ll get it. Give me money and we’re going to get it done. And when it doesn’t work, again, it’s the like, it’s the reverse sc we do where they can say, ah, it would’ve worked if not for. Those goddamn activists who got, now they’re calling ‘em the groups. Oh, the group’s got in the way, but it’ll work next time.because we’re going to get the groups out of here and then we’ll do it. Which is like, they kind of want a smaller and smaller democratic party until it’s small enough for them to control. And like guys, that’s not going to win in the mass, elections. I’m sorry. So like there’s that bit, which is like mean of me, but I think true the other bit, and here, like I’ll, criticize myself a bit.Donors do want, I mean, particularly rich donors do want to hear a story that tells them, here’s how we’re going to win, right? Like, here is the realistic thing. If you give money to this thing, I really believe, and I can show you in a slide deck that it is going to produce results and it’s all fixable.Like, I, am up in arms looking around at the current media system as it gets, [00:29:00] bought out from under us saying this is just going to make. An already hard job, even harder. And the pro, like the easy solution there is we need liberal sent billionaires to start buying up media out outlets too.And the problem is that there aren’t any media liberal sent billionaires, right? Like, there, there are some billionaires, but there the other side has more money than we do. And so I’m left sort of calling attention to the problem. But if someone were to say to me like, okay, give me a five step plan and if we do it, we’re going to win.I would’ve real trouble there because realistically like what I like realistically, everything’s bad and I, can mostly just say like, here are all the ways that everything’s really bad, that’s depressing. And people would rather hear the WelcomePAC. People say like, no, if we just elect moderate candidates in every district and never mention climate change or trans people or like anything else that, bums.[00:30:00] Centris who aren’t paying attention out, then we’ll win on a landslide. Totally. And it’s like, guys, you’re run, like if moderates demanded that much, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be the president, like the man, bulldozed the East wing of the White House during a government shutdown. And people are like, yeah, but I don’t know.Democrats seem a little too liberal to me. Like if Democrats seem a little too liberal to you when that’s happening, what that’s largely telling us is you’re not learning about politics by closely watching the President and the Democrats. You’re learning about it through a background information ecosystem, which is now wholly owned by conservatives.Matthew Sheffield: That’s lying to you.Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Well, I mean, so I would, I mean, I agree with that analysis except for the point about more money. So, again, if you look at the Brennan Center’s reporting and open secrets there’s actually more democratic money. Now whether, but, there is an asterisk. There is an asterisk in the Elon Musk, [00:31:00] buying Twitter for $44 billion doesn’t technically count as a campaign experience. So, expenditure. So like I grant that. So my point being though, like just in terms of hard campaign cash Democrats because of a more engaged and fired up base, actually they, the base wants to do big things.They would like somebody to offer them opportunities to give to something big. Lots of things. I mean, like, we don’t even have a, TPUSA alternative. What the hell? And. No, but it’s not, also not youth focused either. Like, and I like, and I’ll say like, I like invisible and I like what they’re doing, but that can’t be our only thing.And and that’s, that is another core difference I think between the US left and the right that, I can see uniquely having been inside both of them. Is that in the right, they believe in they don’t believe in [00:32:00] centralization except under the leader of the, presidential leader.That’s it. In terms of operational centralization, they don’t do it.There’s, D-P-U-S-A, but there’s also, four or five other right-wing youth oriented groups. And they are all out there doing things and they all have conferences and they’re all giving people jobs and they’re all helping people earn in livelihood.And then the same thing is true on the media. Like they’re, people who have money they stick to. Their things and don’t expect instant profitability out of them the way that Air America or current TV was. It, they expect them to make a profit or, you look at a lot of the left oriented media like Huffington Post or Daily Beast or Salon or bunch of these websites, they’re owned by corporations.And they’re not necessarily, those corporations are not necessarily interested in our values. And so, the [00:33:00] grassroots I think would love a more directional oriented media. But, nobody’s presenting that to them. I.Dave Karpf: Well, and, and there is, I think there’s some really great stuff out there. It is all characteristically small, right? Like the challenge. And part of the challenge is when it gets big. If you have a media operation and it gets really big, then private equity might just decide to come and buy it from you for way too much money.Right? And then we need like to have people who decide to say no to the big check and hope that they’re not public. So they’re public, then they can, get tossed out anyway. And these days, if you get really big, then the Trump administration might try to sue you out of existence in a court that, has a judge will just say yes to them, right?Like they, there’s a thousand different ways that they can now try to weaponize the state against you when they get too big. All of which is very depressing of me, which is the reason why I’m a terrible person to bring to parties. But I would say is like that, doesn’t mean that nobody’s doing interesting things.It means that right now there’s a thousand pretty small, really cool [00:34:00] flowers, brooming. The challenge of scale. What happens once you go from audiences of tens of thousands to audiences of tens of millions is that the challenges get, get a lot more difficult and a lot harder to see the way through of them.Particularly when, I mean it’s, been less than a year since Trump won his election, certainly less than a year of him being in office. Like things are falling apart pretty quick and what we really want is good answers. Now. So like my, technological solution to all of this continues to be time travel.I’m going to start a time travel company investments. because I think with the time machine, I’m going to go back to the 1980s, fix the tax code and from that boom, everything’s going to be better. But lacking on technological solution, everything’s like, it’s not that nobody’s doing good work, it’s that all the really good work is too small for what we need right now.And it’s hard to see how it’s going to get bigger, at least in the timeline that we have.Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well one of the, other unique [00:35:00] challenges I think of the left compared to the right is that the, everybody on the left wants agreement on everything. So, and that, I feel like to some degree that harm has harmed me sometimes in that I don’t especially particularly, line up exactly with any faction.And so that I get, people off, people are, get angry at me because I’m like, well, Gaza wasn’t a really much of a factor in 2024. But then at the same time, I’m perfectly willing to say that WelcomePAC, they, should have polled about Gaza now because everybody else who’s polled on it has certainly found that a majority of Democrats, think that Israel has committed a genocide and, that they’re, that they should have their aid cutoff.So like, that’s a report supposedly about the Democratic coalition probably should have polled on that one. Kind of, kind of bad that they didn’t. but, aside from that though, like, the, there’s just like in the Republican side, as long as you support Trump, they will let you [00:36:00] debate anything else inside of the coalition.So, they, like, I mean they, as we’re seeing right now as we’re recording this on on Halloween that, the, Republican Party is having an active debate right now. Whether to have an open Nazi Nick Fuentes in their coalition and whether it’s okay to associate with a Nazi. Like that’s the level of extreme openness that they have.Now, obviously we don’t want to have Nazis in our coalition o open Nazis, but at the same time, if somebody has a different viewpoint from you on taxation or on, any given issue, you probably shouldn’t try to throw them out on your ear, on their ear because they don’t a hundred percent agree with you.And, Republicans seem to get that better, I think.Dave Karpf: So I’m going to push back on that a little, which is.The, that premise of so long as you 100% back Trump means that like, like nothing else matter. Like the reason why they can [00:37:00] debate should we let Nick Fuentes in, like into the party in good standing? And it seems like they’ve just come down on and Yes. Which like I’m aghast by, but also not entirely surprised.But the reason why they can do that is because like they can disagree about everything. So long as they all agree that whatever Donald Trump says today is what they believe on whatever he’s decided matters. Like, besides that, they’re just sort of arguing like color and shade preferences for the drapes, right?Matthew Sheffield: Well, they don’t have policies. I think that’s fair.Dave Karpf: Right. So like, like Democrats can disagree with each other. Like I, I’m a basketball fan and I really don’t like the Boston Celtics, and I really like Boston Celtics fans to know that I do not like their team, that I find their team being morally reprehensible, like I like to make a big deal about it.The Democratic Party Coalition obviously includes me and Celtics fans, despite me finding that objectionable because in every way that [00:38:00] matters. My disagreement about BAS basketball like is meaningless. that’s, just like ways to pass the time and the Republican Party Coalition. because we’ve seen it over the past decade, right?Like one of the most important differences between Trump won and Trump two is Trump won, still had people who disagreed with Trump, right? He had like members of the joint chiefs of staff who said, no, we’re not going to have our, like military try to fire on protestors like domestic protestors, right?He had, John McCain turning down his signature healthcare bill. So like he had a number of people in the party coalition who were not the Trump faction. And in the intervening years, like I remember during the, Biden years, one thing that I was yelling about and I was. In retrospect quite right to yell about it, to be mad about it was they drummed Liz Cheney out of the party, right?Like she’s running for reelection. She couldn’t even use the win red fundraising system when she was running as an incumbent for reelection because they had decided you are a critic of Trump and that means you are not actually [00:39:00] a Republican despite being Liz Cheney. That purification, once they have reduced the party coalition to just like, like, aggressively positive Trumpists, they can disagree about everything else.because everything else doesn’t matter. Democrats can disagree with each other on stuff that doesn’t matter. But what makes it hard is that since we still care about policy, there’s so many things that matter and that makes the disagreement like much harder. And also, let’s be honest, within the party coalition, many of us can be total assholes about it, which is also not great, but how it works.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Yeah. I mean that, that nihilism that Republicans have, definitely it, can be an advantage for them. But I think it also can be aDave Karpf: cult, a lot of things would be easier. Like the problem is we would be a cult, but it would be a lot easier. Like if all of us were just devoted to one dear leader, then many things would be simpler. The problem is we would be devoted to one dear leader, and that would be very bad, and also makes it hard to actually govern effectively.But lots of simplicity. Sure.[00:40:00]Matthew Sheffield: Well, that’s true. And but at the same time, yeah, like at the same time just airing these disagreements. I think that’s. That’s what doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened in the left side of the aisle outlet. A lot of people will have this idea, well, so and so has a different view about this, so therefore I won’t allow them to be on my podcast, or I won’t, quote them in my story.and that’s not acceptable. And, it’s certainly not a way to resolve your differences and to, grow the party. Because again, like if, you’re trying to cast out people who disagree with you, then you’re going to end up with a very small party eventually. And so that’s where I would say that, we don’t have to say it doesn’t matter these disagreements, but we have to say, look, I am entitled to my belief and you’re entitled to your belief.And, but we’re united in trying to stop authoritarian, Christ of fascism, and that’s the, like, that, that negative polarization, I think is, or negative partisanship is, [00:41:00] that’s a very strong component that the Republican Party has. And I think that has to be imported more and taught more within advocacy media on the left, because I think to, to a very large degree, whether it’s with WelcomePAC or when you read, Jacobin or these other ones, like in their viewpoint almost all their content that they’re directing is attacking the other side of, their party coalition member.and like, that’s, not how you win. You don’t have to agree with them. and I would also say like with regard to campaign effectiveness strategy, when we’re, what we’re seeing is that being effective and working hard and being quick on your feet with social media and saying yes.These are not ideological viewpoints because the where Momani is doing it very well in New York, but also, Gavin Newsom’s doing pretty well on social media as well. So like, and, people are liking what they’re seeing, from him in Pritzker. And so ideology isn’t the barrier here. I don’t [00:42:00] think it’s, competence and openness.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I think there’s still an element. I, to me there’s a shift in like, competence has always mattered. The bit that matters more. I think like Pritzker, I, talked to some about Greg Sargent about this yesterday. Pritzker really, I think of all the governors understands the assignment and that’s both because he’s standing up for his, for values, but also because he’s standing up for them in moments that will actually extend beyond the attentive public.Right? Like he, he made a demand of Christy Noam saying, can you have ice take the weekend off of gassing our children for Halloween so they can go to their Halloween parades? And then she was like, no, absolutely no, we’re, going to be out there and like. Then becomes a story. And I think sort of figuring out how to craft stories for this moment when all of media is fracturing and collapsing is I think the new challenge.Whereas I like you’re right about competence. That’s also sort of like when I teach classes on this stuff, [00:43:00] we, the first half of the semester is the evergreen stuff that would’ve been true in the nineties and is still true today, or was true then is true now. And then the second half is all the stuff that has gotten weird and new now.And so I think that there’s a bit, there’s a bit there of like the competence part has always been important and always been difficult. And then there’s some new difficulties that we don’t really have figured out.The perils of thinking that polling alone is political scienceMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, to that, or to that point, one of the other challenges I think that there, there’s a real divide between democratic political operatives and political scientists. I think because Democratic strategists like to say that they’re data driven, but when you look at the things that they write and like, and, I’m not, this WelcomePAC report is one of many examples I could cite, but, just putting a bunch of polls in a document, like that’s not data analysis.I’m sorry to tell you [00:44:00] guys. That’s not how this works. And like. And so after this, I mean, a couple of the New York Times tried to try to say, well, moderate candidates do better and here’s why. and they just keep getting lacerated by actual data scientists. And it’s just like they think that they’re doing data, but it’s not data.because if you’re not understanding the ultimate cause of something, then when you poll about the proximate cause, or you’re relying on self-identification, like within social science, self-identification, it’s like several steps down from what is a good indicator of somebody’s behavior or somebody’s opinion.And I, I just, I don’t see these things being known in Democratic politics.Dave Karpf: So I, have two things to say. One is, yes, I agree. Like there’s definitely an element to this report of like. They get enough correlations that if they like group together [00:45:00] enough correlations, they can be like, oh, causation. And it’s like, guys, that’s really,Matthew Sheffield: No.Dave Karpf: I think I’ll say in the defense is like the, political scientists who lacerated that New York Times report that’s Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach.And like, I like, I’m a mid-tier political scientist, like my PhD is in political science. I’m a tenured professor. I’m pretty good at the stuff that I do. I think like Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica are so much better at this stuff than I am. So it is like. Like the, thing I want to say in defense of the political practitioners is, this is like saying, oh, you think that you can play basketball?Well, there’s Victor Ana, and it’s like, well, you can’t play against him. Like, no, you can still play. It’s just some people are extremely good. Like tho those two guys are so fucking good at data and like serious data analysis that takes causation seriously in ways that I can read and understand. But like, I couldn’t pull that off either.And like, I’m an actual, like, I’m an actual political scientist. I’m so impressed by those guys. So like, I [00:46:00] do want to note like the, like these guys are going up against world class political scientists, not just sort of like everyday like Dave Karpfs of the world. Like when I can wreck your data analysis, that’s really embarrassing for you when Adam Monica wrecks your data analysis, it’s like, ah, you, went up against a pro. That happens.And like the, also the critique of political scientists is we can do tremendous data analysis focused on causality. Often are left with very little to practical to say about, well, here’s the thing that you actually need to do today.Like, my career has mostly been about trying to bridge those two worlds and understand the serious data analysis well enough to be able to say, here’s the practical, pragmatic stuff to focus on. Or sometimes just saying there isn’t anything to focus on it. They’re, right, but you can’t do anything about it.So like that gap is there and it’s real. But yeah. Also there’s a bit of play acting in this report where like there’s a lot of charts to really impress you of how much data they gathered. And it’s like, these are all correlations that you decided to look for. you’re missing all the hard stuff.[00:47:00]Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, there’s plenty of other correlations somebody could find too, on the opposite side. And and, but it does I mean, speaking of. Really good political scientists. So Lee, Drutman has weighed in on this report as well. And, one of the things that, that he had said was that, that when you look at the, variance between a house candidate and the presidential race in their district and a senate and, the race in their district, what you find is that 98% of all house races have the same margin outcome as the presidential race in their district.And 91% or 92%, I forget which one of Senate races have the same outcome as the presidential race in their district. And so what this means basically is that the, larger political environment is so baked in that campaigns [00:48:00] mostly do not matter. Is what that means. And so if you actually really, and this, goes back to what we’ve been saying in this with regard to media effects in the environment, is that to really have a large agenda setting viewpoint to actually massively change America, you have to focus on the bigger picture.Because telling candidates to say this or that, it just doesn’t work. And the numbers are there that it doesn’t work.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I mean the, when I was in grad school, the big debate in this field was do campaigns matter? And the outcome of that was they do, but only in, like, only at the very tiniest margins. And we now live in an age where elections tend to be raised or thin. And so campaigners can say like, yeah, but the margins where the power are, so let’s pour all this money and energy into doing it.And then Lee comes along and says, like, or you could change the entire electoral system and make it not so stupid. And he’s, right about that. And, I’m coming along and saying, maybe worry about the media system because that’s a dramatic [00:49:00] effect going in the wrong direction. And that’s right.But you know, if you say to Lee like, great, how do, how are we going to do that this year? Then his answer is like, it’s, going to take longer than a year. And if you were to ask me like, Ooh, are we going to do it? I need a time machine, which is like, right. Kind of funny, but not at all helpful. But no, like in, in the, like if you want to fix democracy, you’re not going to do it with just the right candidates saying just the right stu speeches, like, we know that’s not the case.So like, again, my takeaway is not like, oh, they’re wrong. You need to do leftist candidates up, up and down the board. My takeaway is like, my God, stop talking about stump speeches and party platforms and just the right candidate profiles. There’re all these bigger things that matter more. We need to actually pay attention to them.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Or to put it much more crudely, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or rather change the game because like, that’s, that I think is the diff, like it was very damaging that the and I’d have nothing against him. But Sasha Issenberg’s [00:50:00] book, The Victory Lab, it excessively valorize the opinions of people about these campaign operatives and made people think that they were more expert than what they were. Because while we can have actual data about politics, especially in the presidential realm, the n is so tiny that really there’s nothing you can say about it that with any real confidence.And so that is, so there really are limits in terms of what data can give you and what you can know from it. And that’s the difference between the analogy that was Moneyball for baseball, that this politics as Moneyball.Well, no it isn’t because in baseball, you have the rules and that’s it. And you have to play with the rules. There’s not going to be another base added. You know, they’re not going to let you have two pitchers. They’re not going to let you have two batters to hit the same pitch. That’s not happening. But guess what? In politics, [00:51:00] you can change the rules.And that’s the difference between having I call it data and mirage essentially, that they’re, chasing data mirage. And, it’s, so, it’s, not to say that nothing is possible or nothing is real. It’s to say that changing the larger, changing the shape of the river matters more than chasing the current.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I, so I do want to say I have always loved The Victory Lab. I still teach The Victory Lab. I think like I, I like Sasha’s book a lot.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I have nothing against him, but yeah.Dave Karpf: And, but like the thing that I agree with you on is I now teach it as a moment in time to sort of explain there was, a like, I think he was accurate to the time at, that time many people, including myself, really believed that we are bringing science to campaigning.It’s, it is the data scientists against the James Carville to like bring us back to being and to bring against the James Carvilles of the world [00:52:00] and having data science on your side, like running these experiments and AB tests and everything is going to matter. And it’s not that you shouldn’t do ab tests or experiments anymore, but there’s a humility that’s said in the past 10 years of oh, even if that’s helpful, that’s helpful within some strict limits. because the, the party that does that more is not winning. They’re not necessarily winning all the close elections and all of their findings end up being time bound. Right. Like the, thing that worked really well in 2012 doesn’t necessarily work well in 2016 because of the changing media environment or some other changes to the environment.So like, I do love that book, Sasha. If you’re, if Sasha happens to be listening, like, man, still a real fan. And also like it’s a book that when I teach it, I have to sort of explain to students like, this is what it was like in 2012.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and again, it just, it all comes back to the, low number of ends. And so there are [00:53:00] things that we can induce and things that are true within an iteration, but whether they’re true across iterations, all bets are off and you shouldn’t make any.Dave Karpf: Yeah.ConclusionMatthew Sheffield: yeah. And so, and that’s, you know that, I don’t know, excessive faith in data like that is something that you did. So you, had a, blue sky thread responding to the WelcomePAC report in which you also converted into a New Republic article. So, I mean, in terms of, are there specific points from the report that, we haven’t covered here yet that you think we should on thisDave Karpf: No, I, think we’ve handled, we’ve hit the, big points, right? Like the main thing is. If you just read their executive summary, they are stating upfront that what they want is more moderate candidates who deprioritize climate trans people like, like social issues or social identities. And instead talk about sort of bread [00:54:00] and butter kitchen table.They want the Democratic party to be anti elite, but not in a way and like, like, like anti corporations and rich people, but like not sound at all socialist. It sounds very sort of blue rose coded like popularist. Figure out what. Phrases sound good to people, and then say them a lot and just wait for everybody to then like you.And that’s a model of politics that imagines that the public is paying attention to you like they are in their focus groups. And that model is just not the way the world actually works, right? Like people’s impression of the Democratic party does not come from your stump speeches or your platforms.It comes from their incidental information that they’re getting through their social media streams and, like rant TV on in the background. So like at some point it just really bugged me, this report, it’s not, again, like I don’t want to engage in the fight over like, should we be sound, sound more leftist or more, right?Like I, I think that’s the wrong argument to be having and it’s kind of the easy argument to have is fighting [00:55:00] over, what do we, what words come out of the party’s mouths? And instead, I really think people need to have the harder conversation about how do you build up infrastructure to actually compete in a world where the other side has an infrastructure advantage that keeps on getting bigger.Matthew Sheffield: Well, because ultimately your message doesn’t matter if no one can hear it.Dave Karpf: Yeah, no one can hear it. And if instead they’re hearing like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes characterizing your message, then it really doesn’t matter what words you decided to say. People are going to hear their version of your words.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. and in many cases doesn’t even require your words. Like, that’s, the other thing that I think that the popularist do not get, and when they downplay media, because, as we saw with the, in 2024 that, JD Vance forwarded a complete lie about Ohio, that people were eating cats and dogs that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. This was not happening. [00:56:00] And obviously the Democrats were not in favor of people eating cats and dogs. None of this had anything to do with either the Democrats or reality, and yet it was still something that Republicans were talking about constantly and, using to mobilize their party. So, so this, it is infrastructure matters.In, this day and age, it matters so much more because there is no central media node anymore. The mainstream media is irrelevant to most Americans. Now, they might be sort of the grist for the mill that all of these, so like Joe Rogan, or any of these podcasters or even Fox, like, they constantly are like, oh, the New York Times, we did a report about X.So like it, but it’s just, for their mill. Like they’re not telling you what the time said in their report. So fixating on what the time says in their headlines about this or that. It’s not really going to help very much, I don’t think. Like if you are really upset about the times, then you need [00:57:00] to be bankrolling more media.That’s what you need to do. All right. Well, man, I actually, I’m surprised we actually hit this so tight. Dave let me see here. Surely. Okay, I’m going to obviously cut this part out here, so, oh. Okay. Actually let’s maybe end on, let’s, so just to circle back to something in the final segment here as we wrap up I want to go back to something that, that I raised in the beginning, which is that, that the activist and donor class of each party.Has different priorities than the public does. And that this is another reason why you have to spread your message. Like, I think there’s a significant advantage that re Republicans have, and this is wasn’t mentioned in the WelcomePAC report, all which is religion. Republican religion [00:58:00] is their local organizing method.and, that’s, the indivisible is absolutely great, but I want, like five or six things that are out there that are like them and that are targeting different groups. and, to people’s credit, I like people are having to do this with regard to like ice watch things.And and some people are, raising that mutual aid organizations, but like. These things would work a lot better if, the political class of the Democratic Party would get behind them. And people would really love it. Like, we’re, it, we’re, talking about right now with the shutdown, federal snap food benefits are, Trump’s going to cut them off?I mean, it would be so incredibly useful if there was money that had been set aside that, could have just been used to give to families to feed their, to feed themselves and to, and then give ‘em a, pamphlet or something.Dave Karpf: Yeah, it what it brings to mind is an old organizing an [00:59:00] old saying which is that every problem is an organizing opportunity. And, that’s sort of like a, gallows optimism note to end on is if nothing else, 2025 and I expect 2026 are chockfull of organizing opportunities. Everything is getting worse, right?Like turns out federal workers are now probably going to need to go to food banks because they’ve shut down the government for a month and he seems to show no interest in opening it back up. That’s an organizing opportunity. We would rather have fewer of them, but the least we can do is try to build organization that can then serve as counter power.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And absolutely. And like as Republicans attack civil society through that’s government run, there’s an opportunity to step in and make it more explicitly ideological civil society organizations.And the same thing’s true on the internet, as these billionaires are actively trying to [01:00:00] enact “dead internet,” that’s an opportunity for small communities and for people to create the “cozy web” as my friend Venkatesh Rao calls it. And I think that’s right. This is an opportunity for cozy web politics.But it still sucks. Like, I’m not going to say it doesn’t, but this is the—I think this is the only way forward.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I think that’s right.Matthew Sheffield: All right. Well, well, it’s a conversation that that we will, we’ll have to be thinking about that in the days, weeks, years, et cetera, to come. So, butDave Karpf: Should be continued. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. All right. Well, good to have you back, Dave.Dave Karpf: Yeah. Thanks for having me.Matthew 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 if you like what we’re doing, we have. Free and paid subscriptions on Patreon and also on Substack.If you want to subscribe on Patreon, just go to [01:01:00] patreon.com/discoverflux. And if you want to subscribe on Substack, just go to flux.community. And if you’re a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support. I really appreciate it.And if you can’t afford to subscribe right now, that’s okay. But you can help out by us tweeting the links or, and if, you are unable to afford a paid subscription right now, that’s okay. 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Episode Summary One year after Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Democrats are still trying to figure out what to do for the next time around and what to do in the 2026 midterm elections as control of Congress is once again at stake.There were a lot of people offering advice to the Democrats in this regard, and certainly the most well-funded of those people are the ones who say that the party has become too liberal and has to modify its stances to become more popular and resonant with public opinion.And at the same time, there are people on the further left side of the coalition arguing that the Democrats have become too conservative and that they have alienated people who want a more radical change in society to fix things that are broken, and not to step back at all on defending abortion access or trans rights.Each side of this intra-left debate offers worthy points, but both groups tend to understate the immense effect that media have on people’s political opinions. That is the central topic of my new e-book, What Republicans Know, so please do help me out and purchase it if you haven’t yet.Someone else’s work you should consider in this regard is our guest on today’s program: Dave Karpf is an associate professor of political science at George Washington University, and he’s written several books on the role of media and public opinion.Last week, he wrote an article in the New Republic about a new report from a group called WelcomePAC, which argued that Democrats need to become more moderate, but which also largely ignored how many people don’t know about candidates’ policy views.The video of this episode 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--Free excerpt from “What Republicans Know”--How much do political party elites know about their own voters?--Reactionaries built an infrastructure to attack democracy, their opponents must do the same to defend it--Americans want big ideas, but Trump’s opponents aren’t providing them--Democratic losses stem from their failure to communicate--Trump’s insult comic shtick and the right’s new media shock troopsAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction11:01 — Policies are far from the only thing that matters to voters17:03 — Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantage through inaction22:11 — Political parties need permanent infrastructure34:55 — Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?43:20 — The perils of thinking that polling alone is political science53:11 — 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: And joining me now is Dave Karp. Hey Dave. Welcome back to Theory of Change.Dave Karpf: Okay. Thanks. Having me again.Matthew Sheffield: So, you had a great thread on the WelcomePAC report, which I have to say is when I read that, I instantly was like, oh man, these people like “Welcome Back, Kotter,” the seventies TV series.Dave Karpf: It does.Matthew Sheffield: So, but you know, in fairness to them, I, do want to say that there are some things, there’s a bunch of stuff in this report that’s high-quality and that does match established, well-confirmed political science. And this is, in my view, the highest-quality, more centrist-leaning document that we’ve seen since 2024.Do you agree with that?Dave Karpf: Yeah, I mean the, when I opened this, the first thing that I noticed, they, they have a list of people that they’re thinking and it includes a number of political scientists who I know and deeply respect. It also includes a [00:04:00] number of people who are immediate red flags for me, Nate Silver is on this thing, like Nate Silver was a great person to talk to five, 10 years ago. Lately he’s mostly seems to be playing poker.So there were a couple of immediate red flags, but also there were a number of people who I was like, okay, if you are, like, if you’re talking to Aaron Strauss and Chris Warshaw. I’m interested in what you have to say. And I think they took seriously that they wanted to gather the data and see what it told them.I have some things we can get into about what data they decided to look at and what they didn’t decide to gather. But I think they, at least took it seriously.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Absolutely. And, and there were a couple of other red flags for me with a, like they cited James Carville and their title page and a Republican pollster. How does that make you look better? I, don’t think that it does guys.But nonetheless there are some points in here that are true and like one of the, things that I try to do with my writing and podcast [00:05:00] is to, show the various factions of the, left that, nobody is a hundred percent correct in, understanding elections.Like each side actually has viewpoints that are true and each one has ideas that are false. And so one of the, there are a couple of things that are true in this report is that irregular voters are not ideologically committed compared to people who are regular voters. And, that’s, I, that’s, something that I think people on the progressive side might struggle with that concept or accepting That seems like.Dave Karpf: Yeah. And I, the thing that I tell my students at the beginning of every semester is, the answer to any question worth asking is, well, it’s complicated. And as political scientist, that’s where I feel comfortable sort of exploring the complication as a pragmatic strategist, well, it’s complicated isn’t a good answer, right?So the hard questions of things like, should the Democrats try to nominate more centrist or more progressive candidates, [00:06:00] what people would really like is there to be a clean, easy answer to that. And that includes progressives. Who would really like to think that, when you nominate a bold progressive, they’re likely to win.And what the data shows is, well, it’s complicated. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a centrist. There are scenarios where you’re better off with a bold progressive. In either case, it would kind of be nice to have somebody just dripping with charisma and lacking in scandals. But those people are few and far between, and so it’s all complicated and that like that is, I think some of the use of a report like this is sort of reminding us that the simple story you’d like to tell yourself is also not quite true.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And one of the other things that they noted in here that is true is that political donors or activists tend to have more polarized opinions than the general public or even their own co partisans in their party. Now the Democrats have a much wider range of opinions compared to Republicans.And so that makes things a little more difficult as well, in [00:07:00] particular for them. And, and so the, these are real challenges that the Democratic Party, there are unique challenges that the Democratic party has that do make things harder for them compared to Republicans and I, think that’s fair. We have to say that.Dave Karpf: we do the, bit that I want to quibble on there, because when I read that passage from them, I was annoyed. Is.​If we start from the premise that politics is complicated and the answer to everything is, well, it’s complicated. Part of what that sets up is like, I think it’s okay for your party elites to be more interested in some issue portfolios than the mass public. If the reason they’re more interested in them, I’m thinking particularly with climate change, isn’t because they’re, died in the wool I ideologues, but because they’re looking at it and having spent a lot of time wrestling with it, they say, well, no, this is really bad and we as policymakers really need to care.Right. Historically, foreign policy is something that the masses [00:08:00] mostly don’t pay attention to. And so it’s really important to have people in government who do pay attention to it, even if they’re going to be out of step with the masses. Because the masses aren’t tuning in. So to the ex, like when you have elites that are out of step with the party base or the mass public that they want to get to vote for them, we’re not out out of step with them.Because they have sort of different ide, ideological priors. That’s a thing that we want to remind ourselves of and sort of, sort of check our instincts. But when they’re out of step, because they’re more well informed, because they’re the people who are actually paid to develop expertise and wrestle with the complications.Like I, I think it’s important to remember that like we run elections and, win elections in order to govern, and a lot of the stuff that goes into governing is in fact going to be unpopular just because governance is complicated and a lot of it sucks.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, another issue where that’s very relevant what you just said is, the, the issue of democracy, quote unquote. So, the average person, I don’t [00:09:00] expect them to care about political systems and, the, Overton window and, political theory like, oh, that’s, they have better things to do in their lives than obsess over those types of things that you and I are thinking about.And, so, but yeah, like it, the doesn’t mean that they don’t matter and in fact, argue, I think we could say that climate change and democracy are probably the the most. Important issues from an objective standpoint because they determine whether you have a future of the polity.Dave Karpf: Right.And also if, the party, I’m particularly annoyed on climate both because I come out of the environmental movement, but also because Matt Yglesias keeps on beating this drum and I just think he’s wrong. Like Yglesias seems to have concluded that climate is a loser issue. Democrats should stop talking about it.Just assume that some technology will save us. because it, it’s a loser, so don’t do it. And A, I disagree with him that’s a, the route that they should take. [00:10:00] But B, I would also say pragmatically, if you just let climate change keep getting worse in order to hopefully win some more elections in the near term, you’re also going to end up living in a hotter, less safe, less stable world in the future.Where it is difficult as the governing party to keep on getting reelected. Like the inattentive public is just going to blame you when things go wrong. So you should take governance choices that in the medium and long term, hopefully make it less likely for things to go wrong. Otherwise, what’s the point of democracy to begin with?And I like, I just think some of these elector editorialists or the, like, they’re calling the missiles populists now, like I, I think they seem to have forgotten that like, you don’t need to, you don’t need to campaign in, prose. You can campaign in poetry, but if you’re going to be trying to win elections, you then actually need to do the policy work that leads to a more stable and hopefully prosperous nation.Otherwise when you do win, you’re going to be living, you’re going to be governing in such a manner that like they kick you [00:11:00] out next time.Policies are far from the only thing that matters to votersMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And that I think was one of the critical flaws in this report is that they, have a absurd viewpoint about that the public knows about issues and cares about them. And, and, the reality is, I mean, Kamala Harris, she, she ran her campaign and her policy positions to be maximally popular,Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Like the people who’ve, some of the people who were financing this report were also financing and directing the Kamala Harris campaign. And so like we tried their idea and we’ve tried their idea for the past several decades and, it actually hasn’t worked. And, like the thing with Joe Biden in 2020, the, problem with this, popularist approach to me is that it’s not actually popularist, it’s not popular.And like, and Trump won [00:12:00] because people, oh, sorry. Biden beat Trump in 2020 because Trump was really horrible and, we had a, he was a disaster. Like it wasn’t that people thought Joe Biden was great, and his policies were awesome.And that’s the problem with these guys is that they don’t like, they, it’s Bill Clinton won because of Ross Perot. Obama won not because of his strategies, but because he was a really good candidate who spoke really well. And so the, problem that Democrats have is that you’ve got this consultant class that sort of glommed onto these two candidates. Like, what, happened to Organizing for America?Nothing. What happened to all of this local movement that they had built that had arose around him? Nothing.Dave Karpf: Yeah, though I, one thing I would add in is. Obama also won because he was running against a Republican after two Republican terms when things were like, we both had foreign wars that had gotten unpopular and the economy imploded. Right? So like there is [00:13:00] historically, there’s what we call sort of like a like a thermostatic or a sort of a back and forth phenomenon where people tend to vote in presidential elections based on their opinion of the incumbent president or incumbent party.And it tends to go back and forth. there’s, no world in which the Democrats win normal elections for the ne for the next like 40 years, like eventually Republican wins. And that it particularly happens once people decide, like in political science we call it, they, call it I think the time for change model.I haven’t looked at thisMatthew Sheffield: Yeah, I was just going to say that. Yeah.Dave Karpf: Yeah. But like, part of why Obama wins, like it helps that he is historically charismatic, but it also helps that he is running against the Republicans after George w Bush’s, like, I think Republican party approval was at like 20 something percent at that point.And John McCain like,Matthew Sheffield: too. Yeah.Dave Karpf: yeah. Like, and you had Hurricane Katrina and then also the great financial crisis. Like, like of course Bane didn’t win that election. I’m pretty sure Kamala Harris could have won under those circumstances too. Like there’s some candidate quality, [00:14:00] but a lot of it’s actually the broader circumstances, which again is why there like, sure go ahead and campaign in poetry, but you need to govern in a manner that makes it less likely that objective conditions suck.Because when objective conditions suck, then inattentive voters will just cast your party out. Assuming we have normal elections, which I hope we have those in 2028, but yh I had another thought. It’s coming back to me. Yeah. Oh, here’s the other thought. There, there’s a turn of phrase that I coined for when I’m cri criticizing the, tech barons, but it’s useful here, I think which is the, reverse Scooby-Doo.Now the reverse Scooby-Doo is when you sort of imagine yourself as the villain in Scooby-Doo and say like, we would’ve gotten away with it, if not for, insert thing. And we see this from the tech barons a lot where like, like crypto, like, Ava for a long time has like insisted that the entire economic system is about to collapse in six months and Bitcoin will rise.If it doesn’t happen, then it is, [00:15:00] the government’s fault for interfering. And so it’s like his, it, creates sort of a pressure release valve where he can loudly predict this and people can listen to him. Then when it doesn’t happen, he is like, well, no, it was, I like included a reason why, like, I’m not wrong, even though it didn’t happen.And, with these centrist consultants, like they talk a lot in this report about how Democrats need to talk about kitchen table issues. And if they just talk about it, then they will do better. And their evidence is asking the electorate, polling the electorate after the 2024 election and finding the electorate says, yeah, they don’t really talk about kitchen table issues.They’re mostly talking about like, I don’t know, climate and trans people. And so they then say, oh, that must mean that they talk too much about climate and trans people. They just talk different than what happened. But if you do a content analysis, it turns out that Kamala Harris was constantly talking about kitchen table issues.She was not constantly raising trans people, that she was not constantly talking about climate. My God. And so this idea that like, yeah, they tried our thing, but like if you just try it harder next time, like surely it [00:16:00] wasn’t like even though she took our advice when we failed, it’s somebody else’s fault that’s always in there.To me, the lesson here is really the Democratic party does not get to control what people’s impression of the Democratic Party is. This, they, had more control of that 20 or 30 years ago when we still had the broadcast media ecosystem. And you would develop sound bites that would get played on CNN, right?Like there was a, logic of this stuff in the James Carville age that political consultants, including Centrus political consultants, really had figured out. And they know that doesn’t quite work. They don’t really know what’s replaced it. But part of what’s replaced it is social media. The other part of what’s replaced it is like, my God, right-wing billionaires have bought up both all the mainstream media outlets and all the social media outlets.Like the reason why everyone thinks that Democrats talk about trans people all the time is that Fox News and CNN and Politico constantly talk about what are Democrats saying about trans people? Oh, they’re [00:17:00] defending their position instead of throwing ‘em under the bus, or, oh, they threw them under the bus.Democrats created their gigantic media disadvantageDave Karpf: Let’s talk about that like. It th 30 years ago, there were leftists who were like, oh, the, problem is corporate media is controlling everything. And I was actually back then one of those people being like, it’s a little more complicated than that. Like, give him a break, understand the rules of the game and play towards it.And now I find myself saying like, oh no, like Larry Ellison’s son, David just bought CBS and put Perry Weiss in charge and now he’s trying to buy CNN. Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post and is now saying, no, I’m going to have a very strong hand in what it says and what it does. Like the owners are now making very clear that they have an ideology and the press is only going to print that ideology.And they’re also buying the social media companies. They can rejigger the algorithms. If you follow every word of this report, the Democrats are not going to become known for the things that deciding to win or WelcomePAC wants them to be known for. because no one will hear that. because people aren’t tuning in to watch your stump speeches, they’re not reading the party [00:18:00] platforms, they’re getting incidental knowledge of, the party from what they’re sort of vaguely seeing in the background.And all that is getting set by a bunch of sent billionaires who like Trump or at least want to serve Trump and are buying up all the outlets. Like you gotta compete with that.Matthew Sheffield: You do. Yeah. And and that’s one of the central points in, my new ebook what Republicans know, like, so as from my own, experience in Republican politics they’re just, they have been so much better at politics because, and they have to be because, you, they’re, these reactionary positions are hated by most Americans.Like most Americans want to protect social security, They want to have civil rights. They, they, want have Medicare. They want to have, they, want to have jobs programs, they want to have education, student loans, and, they want all these things and they want to protect the environment.Yes. In fact, they do. And and so they’ve, had to, Republicans had to home or reactionary Republicans after they. After they took over, the party [00:19:00] really had to develop an infrastructure for themselves. And, that’s something that in the US left, that just hasn’t been done.And, it’s because as I have the graph graphs in my, in the book that, like the Republican ecosystem is circular, every piece of it creates new inputs for the next step. So the activists are created by the media. The media created by the parties, funded by the parties, and then the parties are funded by the donors, and the donors come from the activists.And so whereas, and in the democratic side of things, they’re blowing more than half their money on TV ads local TV ads, like, but number one, young adults are not watching local television at all. Like,Dave Karpf: people aren’t watching tele like it is. Only my parents’ generation are watching live television for anything other than dancing with the Stars and live sporting events. Like, no, no one just turns on NBC anymore.[00:20:00]Matthew Sheffield: No. No, they don’t. and then, the wor even worse of this strategy an even worse aspect of this strategy is that many of these local stations are owned by right-wing billionaires. So the Democratic party is literally funding right wing media.That’s what they’re doing. And they’ve been doing it for decades now.Like if you add up all the amounts over the, decades, like just, since Obama, they have given Sinclair Fox and Nexstar more than $1 billion.Dave Karpf: Yeah, And again, I, what stands out to me is like to me, this is a failure of planning for the medium term instead of the short term. Because in the short term, I can understand you need to win an election. If the audience is, if the audience you’re trying to hit is on local television, you gotta go spend on local television.Read them [00:21:00] like go win the election. because that’s going to determine the shape of the next two years. And you do need to do that. The problem is that’s kind of only what they do. Like the, way that I remember sort of coming to this realization since I’ve been in politics and organizing since the nineties like I remember in 1998 people talking after the congressional election about how well we really need to build party infrastructure at the state and local level.And Republicans are doing that. They’re running people for school board. We need to do that too. And everyone agreed like, oh yeah, we should do that. Then 2006, 2008, we’re still having that same conversation as though it’s a new conversation. And even at times, people would launch initiatives and those initiatives would get some funding and they would get some interest.And those initiatives would last like four years, six years, show some results. ButMatthew Sheffield: Dean, actually to hisDave Karpf: yeah, I mean, Howard,Matthew Sheffield: state strategy.Dave Karpf: right, he, like, he did it. So it’s not that we’ve never even tried it, but when we try that, [00:22:00] it doesn’t last for very long because the, impulse to defund that and put all of the money just into the short term thing means that we never build up that media infrastructure.Political parties need permanent infrastructureDave Karpf: We never developed that party infrastructure. Like it just ends up being sort of a hollow party organization and hollow media outlets where like you, every two years they’re like, oh, let’s go find some social media influencers to talk to, like. You need to spend a decade creating a pipeline so you can have your own Ben Shapiros and then eventually like try to have your own real equivalence of like CNN and the Washington Post.Now that the Republicans have bought those too, that requires both a lot of money and a lot of commitment, but also a lot of time and planning up for the medium term or even the long term instead of just thinking, what are we going to do in the next two years?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah, absolutely. And, it isn’t that there is not the money for this though. That’s the other thing. So, in, in the, between [00:23:00] the, hard campaign direct donations and dark money groups, Kamala Harris had more than $2 billion at her disposal. And the New York Times reported that, she was getting so much money and that they were basically desperate to spend it.So they were just literally buying any random thing that they could, advertising that they could. So they, they blew a million dollars on the Las Vegas sphere advertising and, they did drone shows and, and instead of just giving that money to local parties and say, Hey, this is for you to use for the next four years, any way you see for.Do it, and, and, that’s the kind of time commitment that they need, and the same thing like with, like you mentioned Ben Shapiro, like his Daily Wire website that was funded by Ted Cruz’s top donors, that they were directed to fund it because they had basically maxed out [00:24:00] as much as they wanted to give to him directly.So then the, cruise people were like, Hey, go fund this new daily wire thing. And so they did, and they, and they stuck with it and it workedforhim.Dave Karpf: Part of the difficulty here is. There, there is the money for it if we’re counting what comes in elections. But I think particularly since a lot of that money is small donor money and small donors tend to show up only when there’s an emergency and you need the cavalry, like the lack of like a handful of centi-billionaires.Like I, again, this is a, like a dream from 15 years ago, but one of my dreams 15 years ago was, wow. It would be incredible if some of the old climate activists who went and started clean energy companies, like if they got exceptionally rich, it would be amazing to go to them and say like, Hey, we need money for organizing and trainings.because they would get it because they used to do that work. Like if we could just have more good billionaires who [00:25:00] understood organizing infrastructure and media infrastructure and valued it, then that medium term problem gets more easily solved. Whereas the challenge here is even though there, there’s enough money for it, if you could sort of hand of God a portion of it better, like part of the challenge is that there isn’t as much funding in between election cycles.And that’s where it really hurts that, it’s like, like Michael Bloomberg will fund some stuff, but, and like George Soros will fund some stuff. Pierre Mjr will fund some stuff. But we’re, you’re talking about a handful of names who are usually single digit billion dollars. Bloomberg is double digits, I guess.Like the sheer aggregation of money. Like towards people who were libertarians and so they invested in crypto 15 years ago and have ridden that wave has just made it so that there’s like the funding pie for people with large piles of money who will invest, can invest on a 10 year basis, I think has gotten more and more slanted in a way that just makes me [00:26:00] depressed.Like it’s not that it’s impossible, but like the playing field keeps on getting more tilted while the need to do something about this. Like to, have donors act something in the long term gets more, becomes more of an emergency.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I, and that’s a very realistic and important point to make. But, and it does also indicate though the, need for a more populist rhetorical and policy stance on the part of the party. I mean, and, that, that does, there is a, big difference. Probably the biggest difference between the Republican ecosystem, the democratic ecosystem, is that the Republican donor CL class and activist class they’re not loyal to the party per se. They’re actually loyal to their ideology. And so the Republican party is their vehicle, whereas the people who donate to the Democratic party tend to be donating it to the Democratic party or as [00:27:00] a charity, sort of. I’m helping civil society, so that’s why I’m giving this money. They don’t have a specific, and, this is probably why, these more partisan type groups like Searchlight or like, WelcomePAC that they don’t have, like, they, they’re specifically trying to make almost a, post ideological politics.But that’s not possible. And, I don’t think that they get that. Because, for the people who pay them, that’s what they want. They absolutely seem to want that. But we don’t live in that world and maybe we never did it.Dave Karpf: Yeah. It’s also, I mean, if there’s two things I’ll grant, the snarky thing I’ll say is there’s always going to be money in telling large donors, Hey, like, here is a magic wand. If people just use these phrases or just elect these proper candidates, then we will all be saved. I’m going to share these [00:28:00] insights with you.You are so smart, you’ll get it. Give me money and we’re going to get it done. And when it doesn’t work, again, it’s the like, it’s the reverse sc we do where they can say, ah, it would’ve worked if not for. Those goddamn activists who got, now they’re calling ‘em the groups. Oh, the group’s got in the way, but it’ll work next time.because we’re going to get the groups out of here and then we’ll do it. Which is like, they kind of want a smaller and smaller democratic party until it’s small enough for them to control. And like guys, that’s not going to win in the mass, elections. I’m sorry. So like there’s that bit, which is like mean of me, but I think true the other bit, and here, like I’ll, criticize myself a bit.Donors do want, I mean, particularly rich donors do want to hear a story that tells them, here’s how we’re going to win, right? Like, here is the realistic thing. If you give money to this thing, I really believe, and I can show you in a slide deck that it is going to produce results and it’s all fixable.Like, I, am up in arms looking around at the current media system as it gets, [00:29:00] bought out from under us saying this is just going to make. An already hard job, even harder. And the pro, like the easy solution there is we need liberal sent billionaires to start buying up media out outlets too.And the problem is that there aren’t any media liberal sent billionaires, right? Like, there, there are some billionaires, but there the other side has more money than we do. And so I’m left sort of calling attention to the problem. But if someone were to say to me like, okay, give me a five step plan and if we do it, we’re going to win.I would’ve real trouble there because realistically like what I like realistically, everything’s bad and I, can mostly just say like, here are all the ways that everything’s really bad, that’s depressing. And people would rather hear the WelcomePAC. People say like, no, if we just elect moderate candidates in every district and never mention climate change or trans people or like anything else that, bums.[00:30:00] Centris who aren’t paying attention out, then we’ll win on a landslide. Totally. And it’s like, guys, you’re run, like if moderates demanded that much, then Donald Trump wouldn’t be the president, like the man, bulldozed the East wing of the White House during a government shutdown. And people are like, yeah, but I don’t know.Democrats seem a little too liberal to me. Like if Democrats seem a little too liberal to you when that’s happening, what that’s largely telling us is you’re not learning about politics by closely watching the President and the Democrats. You’re learning about it through a background information ecosystem, which is now wholly owned by conservatives.Matthew Sheffield: That’s lying to you.Dave Karpf: Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Well, I mean, so I would, I mean, I agree with that analysis except for the point about more money. So, again, if you look at the Brennan Center’s reporting and open secrets there’s actually more democratic money. Now whether, but, there is an asterisk. There is an asterisk in the Elon Musk, [00:31:00] buying Twitter for $44 billion doesn’t technically count as a campaign experience. So, expenditure. So like I grant that. So my point being though, like just in terms of hard campaign cash Democrats because of a more engaged and fired up base, actually they, the base wants to do big things.They would like somebody to offer them opportunities to give to something big. Lots of things. I mean, like, we don’t even have a, TPUSA alternative. What the hell? And. No, but it’s not, also not youth focused either. Like, and I like, and I’ll say like, I like invisible and I like what they’re doing, but that can’t be our only thing.And and that’s, that is another core difference I think between the US left and the right that, I can see uniquely having been inside both of them. Is that in the right, they believe in they don’t believe in [00:32:00] centralization except under the leader of the, presidential leader.That’s it. In terms of operational centralization, they don’t do it.There’s, D-P-U-S-A, but there’s also, four or five other right-wing youth oriented groups. And they are all out there doing things and they all have conferences and they’re all giving people jobs and they’re all helping people earn in livelihood.And then the same thing is true on the media. Like they’re, people who have money they stick to. Their things and don’t expect instant profitability out of them the way that Air America or current TV was. It, they expect them to make a profit or, you look at a lot of the left oriented media like Huffington Post or Daily Beast or Salon or bunch of these websites, they’re owned by corporations.And they’re not necessarily, those corporations are not necessarily interested in our values. And so, the [00:33:00] grassroots I think would love a more directional oriented media. But, nobody’s presenting that to them. I.Dave Karpf: Well, and, and there is, I think there’s some really great stuff out there. It is all characteristically small, right? Like the challenge. And part of the challenge is when it gets big. If you have a media operation and it gets really big, then private equity might just decide to come and buy it from you for way too much money.Right? And then we need like to have people who decide to say no to the big check and hope that they’re not public. So they’re public, then they can, get tossed out anyway. And these days, if you get really big, then the Trump administration might try to sue you out of existence in a court that, has a judge will just say yes to them, right?Like they, there’s a thousand different ways that they can now try to weaponize the state against you when they get too big. All of which is very depressing of me, which is the reason why I’m a terrible person to bring to parties. But I would say is like that, doesn’t mean that nobody’s doing interesting things.It means that right now there’s a thousand pretty small, really cool [00:34:00] flowers, brooming. The challenge of scale. What happens once you go from audiences of tens of thousands to audiences of tens of millions is that the challenges get, get a lot more difficult and a lot harder to see the way through of them.Particularly when, I mean it’s, been less than a year since Trump won his election, certainly less than a year of him being in office. Like things are falling apart pretty quick and what we really want is good answers. Now. So like my, technological solution to all of this continues to be time travel.I’m going to start a time travel company investments. because I think with the time machine, I’m going to go back to the 1980s, fix the tax code and from that boom, everything’s going to be better. But lacking on technological solution, everything’s like, it’s not that nobody’s doing good work, it’s that all the really good work is too small for what we need right now.And it’s hard to see how it’s going to get bigger, at least in the timeline that we have.Is the U.S. left too obsessed with internal debate?Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well one of the, other unique [00:35:00] challenges I think of the left compared to the right is that the, everybody on the left wants agreement on everything. So, and that, I feel like to some degree that harm has harmed me sometimes in that I don’t especially particularly, line up exactly with any faction.And so that I get, people off, people are, get angry at me because I’m like, well, Gaza wasn’t a really much of a factor in 2024. But then at the same time, I’m perfectly willing to say that WelcomePAC, they, should have polled about Gaza now because everybody else who’s polled on it has certainly found that a majority of Democrats, think that Israel has committed a genocide and, that they’re, that they should have their aid cutoff.So like, that’s a report supposedly about the Democratic coalition probably should have polled on that one. Kind of, kind of bad that they didn’t. but, aside from that though, like, the, there’s just like in the Republican side, as long as you support Trump, they will let you [00:36:00] debate anything else inside of the coalition.So, they, like, I mean they, as we’re seeing right now as we’re recording this on on Halloween that, the, Republican Party is having an active debate right now. Whether to have an open Nazi Nick Fuentes in their coalition and whether it’s okay to associate with a Nazi. Like that’s the level of extreme openness that they have.Now, obviously we don’t want to have Nazis in our coalition o open Nazis, but at the same time, if somebody has a different viewpoint from you on taxation or on, any given issue, you probably shouldn’t try to throw them out on your ear, on their ear because they don’t a hundred percent agree with you.And, Republicans seem to get that better, I think.Dave Karpf: So I’m going to push back on that a little, which is.The, that premise of so long as you 100% back Trump means that like, like nothing else matter. Like the reason why they can [00:37:00] debate should we let Nick Fuentes in, like into the party in good standing? And it seems like they’ve just come down on and Yes. Which like I’m aghast by, but also not entirely surprised.But the reason why they can do that is because like they can disagree about everything. So long as they all agree that whatever Donald Trump says today is what they believe on whatever he’s decided matters. Like, besides that, they’re just sort of arguing like color and shade preferences for the drapes, right?Matthew Sheffield: Well, they don’t have policies. I think that’s fair.Dave Karpf: Right. So like, like Democrats can disagree with each other. Like I, I’m a basketball fan and I really don’t like the Boston Celtics, and I really like Boston Celtics fans to know that I do not like their team, that I find their team being morally reprehensible, like I like to make a big deal about it.The Democratic Party Coalition obviously includes me and Celtics fans, despite me finding that objectionable because in every way that [00:38:00] matters. My disagreement about BAS basketball like is meaningless. that’s, just like ways to pass the time and the Republican Party Coalition. because we’ve seen it over the past decade, right?Like one of the most important differences between Trump won and Trump two is Trump won, still had people who disagreed with Trump, right? He had like members of the joint chiefs of staff who said, no, we’re not going to have our, like military try to fire on protestors like domestic protestors, right?He had, John McCain turning down his signature healthcare bill. So like he had a number of people in the party coalition who were not the Trump faction. And in the intervening years, like I remember during the, Biden years, one thing that I was yelling about and I was. In retrospect quite right to yell about it, to be mad about it was they drummed Liz Cheney out of the party, right?Like she’s running for reelection. She couldn’t even use the win red fundraising system when she was running as an incumbent for reelection because they had decided you are a critic of Trump and that means you are not actually [00:39:00] a Republican despite being Liz Cheney. That purification, once they have reduced the party coalition to just like, like, aggressively positive Trumpists, they can disagree about everything else.because everything else doesn’t matter. Democrats can disagree with each other on stuff that doesn’t matter. But what makes it hard is that since we still care about policy, there’s so many things that matter and that makes the disagreement like much harder. And also, let’s be honest, within the party coalition, many of us can be total assholes about it, which is also not great, but how it works.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah.Yeah. I mean that, that nihilism that Republicans have, definitely it, can be an advantage for them. But I think it also can be aDave Karpf: cult, a lot of things would be easier. Like the problem is we would be a cult, but it would be a lot easier. Like if all of us were just devoted to one dear leader, then many things would be simpler. The problem is we would be devoted to one dear leader, and that would be very bad, and also makes it hard to actually govern effectively.But lots of simplicity. Sure.[00:40:00]Matthew Sheffield: Well, that’s true. And but at the same time, yeah, like at the same time just airing these disagreements. I think that’s. That’s what doesn’t happen, hasn’t happened in the left side of the aisle outlet. A lot of people will have this idea, well, so and so has a different view about this, so therefore I won’t allow them to be on my podcast, or I won’t, quote them in my story.and that’s not acceptable. And, it’s certainly not a way to resolve your differences and to, grow the party. Because again, like if, you’re trying to cast out people who disagree with you, then you’re going to end up with a very small party eventually. And so that’s where I would say that, we don’t have to say it doesn’t matter these disagreements, but we have to say, look, I am entitled to my belief and you’re entitled to your belief.And, but we’re united in trying to stop authoritarian, Christ of fascism, and that’s the, like, that, that negative polarization, I think is, or negative partisanship is, [00:41:00] that’s a very strong component that the Republican Party has. And I think that has to be imported more and taught more within advocacy media on the left, because I think to, to a very large degree, whether it’s with WelcomePAC or when you read, Jacobin or these other ones, like in their viewpoint almost all their content that they’re directing is attacking the other side of, their party coalition member.and like, that’s, not how you win. You don’t have to agree with them. and I would also say like with regard to campaign effectiveness strategy, when we’re, what we’re seeing is that being effective and working hard and being quick on your feet with social media and saying yes.These are not ideological viewpoints because the where Momani is doing it very well in New York, but also, Gavin Newsom’s doing pretty well on social media as well. So like, and, people are liking what they’re seeing, from him in Pritzker. And so ideology isn’t the barrier here. I don’t [00:42:00] think it’s, competence and openness.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I think there’s still an element. I, to me there’s a shift in like, competence has always mattered. The bit that matters more. I think like Pritzker, I, talked to some about Greg Sargent about this yesterday. Pritzker really, I think of all the governors understands the assignment and that’s both because he’s standing up for his, for values, but also because he’s standing up for them in moments that will actually extend beyond the attentive public.Right? Like he, he made a demand of Christy Noam saying, can you have ice take the weekend off of gassing our children for Halloween so they can go to their Halloween parades? And then she was like, no, absolutely no, we’re, going to be out there and like. Then becomes a story. And I think sort of figuring out how to craft stories for this moment when all of media is fracturing and collapsing is I think the new challenge.Whereas I like you’re right about competence. That’s also sort of like when I teach classes on this stuff, [00:43:00] we, the first half of the semester is the evergreen stuff that would’ve been true in the nineties and is still true today, or was true then is true now. And then the second half is all the stuff that has gotten weird and new now.And so I think that there’s a bit, there’s a bit there of like the competence part has always been important and always been difficult. And then there’s some new difficulties that we don’t really have figured out.The perils of thinking that polling alone is political scienceMatthew Sheffield: Yeah. Well, and, to that, or to that point, one of the other challenges I think that there, there’s a real divide between democratic political operatives and political scientists. I think because Democratic strategists like to say that they’re data driven, but when you look at the things that they write and like, and, I’m not, this WelcomePAC report is one of many examples I could cite, but, just putting a bunch of polls in a document, like that’s not data analysis.I’m sorry to tell you [00:44:00] guys. That’s not how this works. And like. And so after this, I mean, a couple of the New York Times tried to try to say, well, moderate candidates do better and here’s why. and they just keep getting lacerated by actual data scientists. And it’s just like they think that they’re doing data, but it’s not data.because if you’re not understanding the ultimate cause of something, then when you poll about the proximate cause, or you’re relying on self-identification, like within social science, self-identification, it’s like several steps down from what is a good indicator of somebody’s behavior or somebody’s opinion.And I, I just, I don’t see these things being known in Democratic politics.Dave Karpf: So I, have two things to say. One is, yes, I agree. Like there’s definitely an element to this report of like. They get enough correlations that if they like group together [00:45:00] enough correlations, they can be like, oh, causation. And it’s like, guys, that’s really,Matthew Sheffield: No.Dave Karpf: I think I’ll say in the defense is like the, political scientists who lacerated that New York Times report that’s Adam Bonica and Jake Grumbach.And like, I like, I’m a mid-tier political scientist, like my PhD is in political science. I’m a tenured professor. I’m pretty good at the stuff that I do. I think like Jake Grumbach and Adam Bonica are so much better at this stuff than I am. So it is like. Like the, thing I want to say in defense of the political practitioners is, this is like saying, oh, you think that you can play basketball?Well, there’s Victor Ana, and it’s like, well, you can’t play against him. Like, no, you can still play. It’s just some people are extremely good. Like tho those two guys are so fucking good at data and like serious data analysis that takes causation seriously in ways that I can read and understand. But like, I couldn’t pull that off either.And like, I’m an actual, like, I’m an actual political scientist. I’m so impressed by those guys. So like, I [00:46:00] do want to note like the, like these guys are going up against world class political scientists, not just sort of like everyday like Dave Karpfs of the world. Like when I can wreck your data analysis, that’s really embarrassing for you when Adam Monica wrecks your data analysis, it’s like, ah, you, went up against a pro. That happens.And like the, also the critique of political scientists is we can do tremendous data analysis focused on causality. Often are left with very little to practical to say about, well, here’s the thing that you actually need to do today.Like, my career has mostly been about trying to bridge those two worlds and understand the serious data analysis well enough to be able to say, here’s the practical, pragmatic stuff to focus on. Or sometimes just saying there isn’t anything to focus on it. They’re, right, but you can’t do anything about it.So like that gap is there and it’s real. But yeah. Also there’s a bit of play acting in this report where like there’s a lot of charts to really impress you of how much data they gathered. And it’s like, these are all correlations that you decided to look for. you’re missing all the hard stuff.[00:47:00]Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And, there’s plenty of other correlations somebody could find too, on the opposite side. And and, but it does I mean, speaking of. Really good political scientists. So Lee, Drutman has weighed in on this report as well. And, one of the things that, that he had said was that, that when you look at the, variance between a house candidate and the presidential race in their district and a senate and, the race in their district, what you find is that 98% of all house races have the same margin outcome as the presidential race in their district.And 91% or 92%, I forget which one of Senate races have the same outcome as the presidential race in their district. And so what this means basically is that the, larger political environment is so baked in that campaigns [00:48:00] mostly do not matter. Is what that means. And so if you actually really, and this, goes back to what we’ve been saying in this with regard to media effects in the environment, is that to really have a large agenda setting viewpoint to actually massively change America, you have to focus on the bigger picture.Because telling candidates to say this or that, it just doesn’t work. And the numbers are there that it doesn’t work.Dave Karpf: Yeah. I mean the, when I was in grad school, the big debate in this field was do campaigns matter? And the outcome of that was they do, but only in, like, only at the very tiniest margins. And we now live in an age where elections tend to be raised or thin. And so campaigners can say like, yeah, but the margins where the power are, so let’s pour all this money and energy into doing it.And then Lee comes along and says, like, or you could change the entire electoral system and make it not so stupid. And he’s, right about that. And, I’m coming along and saying, maybe worry about the media system because that’s a dramatic [00:49:00] effect going in the wrong direction. And that’s right.But you know, if you say to Lee like, great, how do, how are we going to do that this year? Then his answer is like, it’s, going to take longer than a year. And if you were to ask me like, Ooh, are we going to do it? I need a time machine, which is like, right. Kind of funny, but not at all helpful. But no, like in, in the, like if you want to fix democracy, you’re not going to do it with just the right candidates saying just the right stu speeches, like, we know that’s not the case.So like, again, my takeaway is not like, oh, they’re wrong. You need to do leftist candidates up, up and down the board. My takeaway is like, my God, stop talking about stump speeches and party platforms and just the right candidate profiles. There’re all these bigger things that matter more. We need to actually pay attention to them.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Or to put it much more crudely, don’t hate the player, hate the game. Or rather change the game because like, that’s, that I think is the diff, like it was very damaging that the and I’d have nothing against him. But Sasha Issenberg’s [00:50:00] book, The Victory Lab, it excessively valorize the opinions of people about these campaign operatives and made people think that they were more expert than what they were. Because while we can have actual data about politics, especially in the presidential realm, the n is so tiny that really there’s nothing you can say about it that with any real confidence.And so that is, so there really are limits in terms of what data can give you and what you can know from it. And that’s the difference between the analogy that was Moneyball for baseball, that this politics as Moneyball.Well, no it isn’t because in baseball, you have the rules and that’s it. And you have to play with the rules. There’s not going to be another base added. You know, they’re not going to let you have two pitchers. They’re not going to let you have two batters to hit the same pitch. That’s not happening. But guess what? In politics, [00:51:00] you can change the rules.And that’s the difference between having I call it data and mirage essentially, that they’re, chasing data mirage. And, it’s, so, it’s, not to say that nothing is possible or nothing is real. It’s to say that changing the larger, changing the shape of the river matters more than chasing the current.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I, so I do want to say I have always loved The Victory Lab. I still teach The Victory Lab. I think like I, I like Sasha’s book a lot.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. I have nothing against him, but yeah.Dave Karpf: And, but like the thing that I agree with you on is I now teach it as a moment in time to sort of explain there was, a like, I think he was accurate to the time at, that time many people, including myself, really believed that we are bringing science to campaigning.It’s, it is the data scientists against the James Carville to like bring us back to being and to bring against the James Carvilles of the world [00:52:00] and having data science on your side, like running these experiments and AB tests and everything is going to matter. And it’s not that you shouldn’t do ab tests or experiments anymore, but there’s a humility that’s said in the past 10 years of oh, even if that’s helpful, that’s helpful within some strict limits. because the, the party that does that more is not winning. They’re not necessarily winning all the close elections and all of their findings end up being time bound. Right. Like the, thing that worked really well in 2012 doesn’t necessarily work well in 2016 because of the changing media environment or some other changes to the environment.So like, I do love that book, Sasha. If you’re, if Sasha happens to be listening, like, man, still a real fan. And also like it’s a book that when I teach it, I have to sort of explain to students like, this is what it was like in 2012.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. Yeah. And so, and again, it just, it all comes back to the, low number of ends. And so there are [00:53:00] things that we can induce and things that are true within an iteration, but whether they’re true across iterations, all bets are off and you shouldn’t make any.Dave Karpf: Yeah.ConclusionMatthew Sheffield: yeah. And so, and that’s, you know that, I don’t know, excessive faith in data like that is something that you did. So you, had a, blue sky thread responding to the WelcomePAC report in which you also converted into a New Republic article. So, I mean, in terms of, are there specific points from the report that, we haven’t covered here yet that you think we should on thisDave Karpf: No, I, think we’ve handled, we’ve hit the, big points, right? Like the main thing is. If you just read their executive summary, they are stating upfront that what they want is more moderate candidates who deprioritize climate trans people like, like social issues or social identities. And instead talk about sort of bread [00:54:00] and butter kitchen table.They want the Democratic party to be anti elite, but not in a way and like, like, like anti corporations and rich people, but like not sound at all socialist. It sounds very sort of blue rose coded like popularist. Figure out what. Phrases sound good to people, and then say them a lot and just wait for everybody to then like you.And that’s a model of politics that imagines that the public is paying attention to you like they are in their focus groups. And that model is just not the way the world actually works, right? Like people’s impression of the Democratic party does not come from your stump speeches or your platforms.It comes from their incidental information that they’re getting through their social media streams and, like rant TV on in the background. So like at some point it just really bugged me, this report, it’s not, again, like I don’t want to engage in the fight over like, should we be sound, sound more leftist or more, right?Like I, I think that’s the wrong argument to be having and it’s kind of the easy argument to have is fighting [00:55:00] over, what do we, what words come out of the party’s mouths? And instead, I really think people need to have the harder conversation about how do you build up infrastructure to actually compete in a world where the other side has an infrastructure advantage that keeps on getting bigger.Matthew Sheffield: Well, because ultimately your message doesn’t matter if no one can hear it.Dave Karpf: Yeah, no one can hear it. And if instead they’re hearing like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes characterizing your message, then it really doesn’t matter what words you decided to say. People are going to hear their version of your words.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. and in many cases doesn’t even require your words. Like, that’s, the other thing that I think that the popularist do not get, and when they downplay media, because, as we saw with the, in 2024 that, JD Vance forwarded a complete lie about Ohio, that people were eating cats and dogs that immigrants were eating cats and dogs. This was not happening. [00:56:00] And obviously the Democrats were not in favor of people eating cats and dogs. None of this had anything to do with either the Democrats or reality, and yet it was still something that Republicans were talking about constantly and, using to mobilize their party. So, so this, it is infrastructure matters.In, this day and age, it matters so much more because there is no central media node anymore. The mainstream media is irrelevant to most Americans. Now, they might be sort of the grist for the mill that all of these, so like Joe Rogan, or any of these podcasters or even Fox, like, they constantly are like, oh, the New York Times, we did a report about X.So like it, but it’s just, for their mill. Like they’re not telling you what the time said in their report. So fixating on what the time says in their headlines about this or that. It’s not really going to help very much, I don’t think. Like if you are really upset about the times, then you need [00:57:00] to be bankrolling more media.That’s what you need to do. All right. Well, man, I actually, I’m surprised we actually hit this so tight. Dave let me see here. Surely. Okay, I’m going to obviously cut this part out here, so, oh. Okay. Actually let’s maybe end on, let’s, so just to circle back to something in the final segment here as we wrap up I want to go back to something that, that I raised in the beginning, which is that, that the activist and donor class of each party.Has different priorities than the public does. And that this is another reason why you have to spread your message. Like, I think there’s a significant advantage that re Republicans have, and this is wasn’t mentioned in the WelcomePAC report, all which is religion. Republican religion [00:58:00] is their local organizing method.and, that’s, the indivisible is absolutely great, but I want, like five or six things that are out there that are like them and that are targeting different groups. and, to people’s credit, I like people are having to do this with regard to like ice watch things.And and some people are, raising that mutual aid organizations, but like. These things would work a lot better if, the political class of the Democratic Party would get behind them. And people would really love it. Like, we’re, it, we’re, talking about right now with the shutdown, federal snap food benefits are, Trump’s going to cut them off?I mean, it would be so incredibly useful if there was money that had been set aside that, could have just been used to give to families to feed their, to feed themselves and to, and then give ‘em a, pamphlet or something.Dave Karpf: Yeah, it what it brings to mind is an old organizing an [00:59:00] old saying which is that every problem is an organizing opportunity. And, that’s sort of like a, gallows optimism note to end on is if nothing else, 2025 and I expect 2026 are chockfull of organizing opportunities. Everything is getting worse, right?Like turns out federal workers are now probably going to need to go to food banks because they’ve shut down the government for a month and he seems to show no interest in opening it back up. That’s an organizing opportunity. We would rather have fewer of them, but the least we can do is try to build organization that can then serve as counter power.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. And absolutely. And like as Republicans attack civil society through that’s government run, there’s an opportunity to step in and make it more explicitly ideological civil society organizations.And the same thing’s true on the internet, as these billionaires are actively trying to [01:00:00] enact “dead internet,” that’s an opportunity for small communities and for people to create the “cozy web” as my friend Venkatesh Rao calls it. And I think that’s right. This is an opportunity for cozy web politics.But it still sucks. Like, I’m not going to say it doesn’t, but this is the—I think this is the only way forward.Dave Karpf: Yeah, I think that’s right.Matthew Sheffield: All right. Well, well, it’s a conversation that that we will, we’ll have to be thinking about that in the days, weeks, years, et cetera, to come. So, butDave Karpf: Should be continued. Yeah.Matthew Sheffield: Yeah. All right. Well, good to have you back, Dave.Dave Karpf: Yeah. Thanks for having me.Matthew 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 if you like what we’re doing, we have. Free and paid subscriptions on Patreon and also on Substack.If you want to subscribe on Patreon, just go to [01:01:00] patreon.com/discoverflux. And if you want to subscribe on Substack, just go to flux.community. And if you’re a paid subscribing member, thank you very much for your support. I really appreciate it.And if you can’t afford to subscribe right now, that’s okay. But you can help out by us tweeting the links or, and if, you are unable to afford a paid subscription right now, that’s okay. 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Episode Summary After language, the scientific method is probably humanity’s greatest achievement; it’s a veritable engine of invention that has allowed us to bend rivers to our will, split the atom and cure many diseases. But while scientific progress has given us the tools to reshape the world and even change our bodies, we haven’t yet figured out how to rewire our mental hardware. The same cognitive instincts that helped our ancestors survive in the wild are now making many of us vulnerable.Although we think of them as separate today, science and superstition were one and the same. For the vast majority of human history, astronomy and astrology were together. Alchemy and chemistry were coeval.Over the centuries, however, science separated itself from pseudoscience, but the old beliefs never went away; they just went underground. As science became increasingly specialized and isolated from the general public, however, these “undead sciences” began gathering political power, a development that far too many advocates of progress did not perceive.In the second Trump administration, superstition has seized control of America’s executive branch in the person of Russell Vought, a Christian nationalist extremist who has been manically destroying as much of America’s scientific achievements as he possibly can, assisted by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a deranged lawyer who has been slashing and burning medical research and treatment.Let’s not sugarcoat it. There are a lot of terrible things happening in science today. But there are also a lot of courageous people standing up to tell the world what’s happening, and standing up for the reality that science and democracy depend upon each other.I have two guests joining me in this episode to discuss: Jenna Norton is a program director at the National Institutes of Health, where she studies the disparities in urology and kidney health, and Mark Histed. He also works at NIH, where he is a senior investigator studying neural computation and behavior. Each is here in their personal capacity, and as members of the Science and Freedom Alliance.The video of this episode is available, the transcript is available. 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—As science faces external attacks, it needs to look within to defend and reform—The sociology behind why Donald Trump loves the ‘poorly educated’—How ‘intuitionist’ thinking became political—and weaponized by the global far right—Government has a duty to teach critical thinking and science literacy to both kids and adults—Why tech billionaires decided to team up with creationists to attack democracy—Right-wing pundits don’t generally try to make arguments, they try to affirm emotions—How liberalism lost touch with the public, and its ability to defend itself—Why Trump is attacking universitiesAudio Chapters00:00 — Introduction12:16 — The importance of science communication and community-participation science23:01 — Politics as the master science27:54 — Jay Bhattacharya and the weaponization of objectivity32:51 — Scientific truth and the Great Barrington Declaration42:30 — Open versus closed epistemologies47:53 — The destruction of American scientific leadership52:59 — The value of curiosity-driven research57:00 — The false promise of AI replacing human scientists01:00:41 — Organizing scientists and the Bethesda Declaration01:03:59 — Science and Freedom Alliance mission01:07:12 — Building institutions for public engagementAudio TranscriptThe transcript of this episode is available separately. 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   Even though they don’t intend to, many people who oppose Donald Trump are unintentionally helping him by saying that his authoritarian policies are actually conservative.It’s obviously true that both reactionary authoritarianism and conservatism are right-of-center political philosophies, but they are definitely not the same thing: Conservatives want to keep things how they are; authoritarians want to centralize power and destroy dissent. That means then that when you label them as the same, you’re engaging in the exact same kind of error that Joe McCarthy did when he equated communism and liberalism.But it’s not just promoting inaccuracy to say that conservatism and authoritarianism are the same. It’s making the job of the authoritarians much easier. That’s because extremist movements throughout history, including Islamists, have frequently used a propaganda technique called “entryism” to disguise their radical agenda in the rhetoric of more mainstream political ideologies.Robert O. Paxton is one of many historians who have noted that 20th century fascist regimes relied upon conservative voters and parties to open the gates to power to them because they didn’t have enough votes on their own.In this episode, I’m joined by former conservative radio host Charlie Sykes to talk about all of this in the current moment. We also discuss the right wing’s free speech ruse, how authoritarianism has always been present within the modern American right, and how Republican consultants promoted extremism within their party until it became a monster that they could no longer control.There’s no doubt whatsoever that the pre-Trump Republican elites bear responsibility for encouraging the growth of authoritarianism within their party, but it’s still important that we avoid telling conservative Americans that Trump’s dictatorial policies are the same as theirs. Joe Manchin is a conservative. Donald Trump is an authoritarian.You can subscribe to Theory of Change and other Flux podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Podcasts, YouTube, Patreon, Substack, and elsewhere.Related Content--Poll finds most Trump voters don’t support his big cuts to medical care--Far-right pastor brags that his Bible study class led to millions of Americans losing health insurance--How Trump’s censorship efforts are giving extremist Republicans what they’ve always wanted--Trump’s war on statisticians and the ‘liberal bias’ of reality--The ‘cancel culture’ myth was always about censoring the center-to-left--How Trumpian Republicans rebuilt Christian nationalism in the philosophical image of the atheist Friedrich Nietzsche 🔒Audio Chapters00:00 — Introduction08:23 — Two political strands within the Republican party13:26 — How extremist groups hide themselves within mainstream ones using ‘entryism’18:28 — Private actors versus government censorship23:05 — Did liberals give up on persuasion after same-sex marriage rightfully won?26:10 — Charlie’s and Matt’s encounters with right-wing extremism during their Republican years31:44 — How Republican campaign operatives encouraged racism and conspiracism37:34 — The criminalization of Christianity narrative41:24 — Final thoughtsAudio TranscriptThe following is a machine-generated transcript of the audio that has not been proofed. It is provided for convenience purposes only. Because of its length, some podcast apps and email programs may truncate it. Access the episode page to get the full text.MATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Yeah. So, today’s topic that we are going to be discussing is, what I’m calling the rate Republican free speech hoax.And it is something that has been going on for many decades now. And both you and I came out of the world of right wing media. and so we’re going to get a little bit inside baseball today in a way that you don’t typically get to do on MSNBC or other places, I think, right? But I want to go behind the curtain a bit because one of the, key points about Trumpism and the far right tradition of reaction that he comes out of is that.They also lied to people like you and me, like, oh, just as much as the [00:04:00] voters who will vote for Trump and have no idea what he stands for. They also lied to the talk show hosts like you and the conservative bloggers, former conservative bloggers like me. CHARLIE SYKES: Well, you know what, I’ve been thinking a lot about, the, argument that you will sometimes hear that, that Trump, that Trumpism is somehow a logical extension of American conservatism. which of course is not. It is a radical break. We, it is not conservative in any sense. It is in fact a radical right wing ideology.But to your point, for years, and it really peaked, I think in the last couple of years, Republicans and the MAGA world dawned the cloak of being free speech absolutist, that they were the champions of it. Now, this was a reaction I think to some of the excesses that we saw in recent years, on academic university campuses. And one of the through lines, even though I described myself as a conservative, one of the through lines of a lot of [00:05:00] what I did and what you did as well, was to try to revivify classical liberalism that classical liberalism that was deeply invested in academic freedom and free speech.And you had people know the absolutist like Elon Musk, who decided that this was going to be the banner that they were going to, go into the 2024 election with. That I think has been exposed as a complete and total hoax. It is one of the biggest bait and switches ever. Doesn’t mean they’re not still principal conservatives who are part of that classical liberal tradition, but people like Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, JD Vance have completely abandoned that.And I know we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but they have embraced. A, rather ranked illiberalism, and I think you and I have talked about this before there have been illiberal attacks on free speech from [00:06:00] the left and from the right, but right now, you are seeing the most aggressive illiberal use of state power to suppress speech that we have seen in decades, if ever in this country.SHEFFIELD: I mean I would say that the closest analog that we’ve had was the Japanese internment. And Trump, he’s saying he wants to lock up people who are-- who he accuses of being part of Antifa, quote unquote. But Antifa doesn’t exist, it’s not an organization nobody can get. Like no one can give them money. It’s literally not possible to give antifa money because they’re anarchists. You cannot have an organization of anarchists, and antifa hates the Democrats. So the idea that the Democrats are somehow setting up this little puppet of antifa super soldiers like it, it is just complete garbage.And it’s an obvious lie. But it’s, they don’t want you to think that through.SYKES: Yeah. But they, but it’s convenient for them. To take some of [00:07:00] the protestors and, obviously there’s a certain symbolism about Portland, there is no such thing as an organized antifa, but there are people who go under that banner and they’ll often wear masks and, they will behave badly.But you know, what Trump has done is he has inflated them because he needs an enemy, right? He needs a pretext for the deployment of truths and for the suppression of various kinds of, speech. And so this has become his pretext. If that doesn’t work, he will simply shift some other target because again, it’s all a pretext.So it may be antifa today it will be somebody else tomorrow, but it’s all a pretext to go after George Sorrows, to go after other critics and to declare various kinds of emergencies to gave him super presidential powers, which by the way, speaking of non-conservative, I mean, are you old enough to remember when conservatives were in favor of small government and they emphasized constitutional protections [00:08:00] and it was all about individual liberty, and the Second Amendment was all about people being able to resist tyranny.Now it’s like, bring it on. Bring on the super state, right? Bring on the dictator, who one day for one one term. It’s a tremendous abandonment of everything they said they were for 10 minutes ago.Two political strands within the Republican partySHEFFIELD: Absolutely. And and, I think we do in historical accuracy, standpoint that this tradition, it was always there.Some of these people were into authoritarianism from the very beginning, including William F. Buckley in his early years. In the beginning he wrote a book explicitly saying, look, there should be no free speech on college campuses.SYKES: Yes.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, God and Man at Yale. And that professors who don’t believe in Jesus should be fired, and professors who are atheists or professors who are Jewish and want to-- he wasn’t even saying that they were [00:09:00] promulgating their specific beliefs. He was just saying they don’t believe in the resurrection and so they need to be fired. Like that was, and then he wrote a book defending Joe McCarthy and saying he was great, and that you should leave him alone. Like it was, in many ways, Buckley was kind of the. With McCarthy, he was like an anti McCarthy.That’s essentially what he was doing. And a lot of people, they, it wasn’t just him like that this whole idea of Dwight Eisenhower as a communist. And that we have to stop him. Like that was a, very big thing. And the whole paranoia about United Nations, which Trump, of course is buying into as well.SYKES: Right.SHEFFIELD: So, so that stuff was always there. And, I’m curious though, from your personal experience as a former conservative talk show host like how often did you see that facet of, this authoritarian reactionism when you, when your callers and the people that you dealt with?SYKES: Well, it was always there. And I’ve described this as the recessive [00:10:00] gene of conservatism, that it was always there beneath the surface.And you can go back even further than that. So, I would encounter it, although, the conservative movement that I was part of was, I think, more aligned with classical liberalism. So let’s talk about, I want to go back to your comments about Buckley, because you’re absolutely right. But Buckley grew, he went through evolutions on race, on speech, on a variety of things.And eventually, a decade after of defending Joe McCarthy, he is playing a crucial role in expelling and excommunicating some of the far right you to some of the John Birch Society, the Robert Welch’s, the KKK, the antisemites, et cetera. He also played a significant role in exiling, at least temporarily, people like Pat Buchanan from the conservative movement because of their antisemitism.But, as you point out, there’s a long tradition of this in American culture. In fact, we can go back [00:11:00] you were mentioning McCarthy era as one of the worst areas. Keep in mind that Joe McCarthy was not president of the United States. We talked about this is the worst sinces McCarthy, well, let’s talk about that, because Dwight Eisenhower was the president, not Joe McCarthy. Imagine Joe McCarthy with the power of the presidency, the power of the FBI, the power of the Department of Justice. What, the would have looked like. We’d gone through a previous red scare, believe it or not, under Woodrow Wilson, kind of forgotten about that American nightmare where we had the Palmer raids, where we had a, an extremely weaponized department of justice that we now and suppressed free speech, particularly socialist speech in some of the most aggressive ways. For some reason, that’s all been memory hole.But I always think going back with your question, there was always a push and pull on the right. Where some of the people, and again, you’re seeing the same thing right now where you have this sort of nationalist nativist right [00:12:00] versus what I thought was the ascendant part of conservatism, and this is what I got wrong. I thought the, reformist, wing of the party that embraced classical liberalism, that brace Cree speech, academic freedom inclusiveness was in fact the future of the party.You look back on that now, and it was clearly a delusion. Donald Trump and MAGA decided that, no, that’s a dead end. We’re going to go with blood and soil. And blood. And soil also means that we’re going to use the state to shape the culture in our own image as opposed to what conservatives had argued for a half a century.That government has a very limited role, and what’s crucial about small government. Is that the smaller government is the greater the sphere for individual freedom. The larger government was the more that sphere of individual freedom [00:13:00] is truken. Well look at Trump and JD Vance and the FCC right now. They are expanding government power and ly every corner of American life and culture, which again, is so diametrically opposed to what we were told.Conservatism was back in well again from, since the end of World War II.How extremist groups hide themselves within mainstream ones using ‘entryism’SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly. So you have these two ideologies, conservatism and reactionism, and, a lot of people I think don’t understand that there are, that these are different things.And from a historical standpoint, the analog is looking at the Soviet Union and liberalism. So with McCarthy both, he was saying that everyone who was a liberal was a communist. Right. But also the communists were saying that they were just good liberals.SYKES: Liberals in a hurry, right?SHEFFIELD: Liberals in a hurry. Yeah. That was their catch phrase. That was [00:14:00] this phenomenon of extremist groups trying to label themselves as part of a mainstream, nonviolent, free speech associated movement. This is called entryism political science, where that’s what they do, is that they wrap and this happens across the world, across ideologies.This also happens in, in Islamic dominated countries where Islamism is an ideology which says there should be no democracy. There should only be religious authoritarianism. And, but I’m just a regular Muslim. This just happens over and that’s what the key to Trump’s continued support is. That he’s lied to conservatives and told them I’m one of you.But he is a reactionary authoritarian who as you said wants a, gigantic government and he literally is taking pieces of private businesses like Intel and and doing everything that they said Joe [00:15:00] Biden was tiring for. Donald Trump is doing it. And then the same thing with, all of these I conspiracies like of Alex Jones, about all the globalists are taking over the world.They’re trying to get rid of American sovereignty. Well, you know what? There are people that are doing it, and it’s people like Peter Thiel. It’s people like Bellagio, Serena Bassan. It’s like, these tech oligarchs, they’re the ones that are doing it. And the same thing with the NRA. And the government’s coming after you and wants to round you up as a citizen.Well, yeah, they are. And it’s your side that’s doing it. Like that. What they, that’s what they tell you.SYKES: Well, I radically agree with you. I think this is an important point for, progressives to realize because, and again, I am frustrated with the people who are saying that there is this straight line through all conservatism that you know, that, if you supported MIT Romney, supported John McCain or any of the Bushes or wild Reagans that you created Donald Trump, this plays into.the Trumpian hands because it normalizes what’s happening now. [00:16:00] It says that it’s just a continuation it, that it’s just the same old, and I think you and I are arguing here. I think this is very important that. It is a big mistake. I think this is the same old, or that this is normal or that this is a continue.It is a very radical break. Now, again, there were these recessive genes. They were always there, but it was not the whole story. And I think the distinctions that you know, that are so important, it is important to make a distinction between say Hubert Humphrey and she guvera. It is a major, it is very important to make a distinction between-- and again, I’m dating myself-- between, an A CLU liberal, and Trotskyites they may do all on the left and to the right. They all look as alike.Well, the left is in many ways making the same mistake. They look at the right and they think, well, all of you people have the same, essentially have the same ideological roots.That [00:17:00] is not true. And by the way. And th this is related to a, maybe it will sound like a digression. Here’s another thing that frustrates me, is the, is that Donald Trump and Maga will often wrap themselves in the cloak of conservatism. And you’re right, they told people, go along with all of this because for years you considered yourself a Republican and you cons conservative.See what we’re doing in your name now. A lot of us are saying, no, that’s not what we’re doing. But think about the whole doctrine of constitutional originally, that they’re, constantly talking about to justify many of the things that, that they’re doing. I don’t know about you, but I’ve spent time going back and reading the Federalist papers and reading about what the founding fathers were thinking and what they were doing and what is not originalist, what Donald Trump is doing right now, the original focus of that constitution was to prevent tyrants. They were obsessed with blocking tyrants, limiting tyrants, [00:18:00] keeping tyrants out of office, and then constraining their power if anybody became tyrants adjacent. This was the fundamental original of originalism. And yet somehow you have a lot of people who are going into the ballot box voting for Donald Trump, calling the pollers.They support what Donald Trump is doing, but they would consider themselves constitutional conservatives. I mean, I think we need to call bullshit on them.Private actors versus government censorshipSHEFFIELD: Absolutely. Yeah. And another thing that they’ve also done that is a key lie for them is that. They equate private actors with, government actors.So if somebody is on, is criticizing some, if a bunch of private citizens are criticizing some, somebody for doing something racist or doing something, sexually harassing somebody that’s not the government, that’s not a violation of free speech. Right? If a whole bunch of people say, you are a jerk [00:19:00] and you did something awful, I don’t like you, that’s not censorship.That’s somebody saying that this is, these is private citizens in using their free speech. that’s, the difference between what Donald Trump is doing with, with scientists. I mean, he literally issued a a list of prohibited words to scientists, words that have nothing to do with, politically correct terms.Like they, they, flag scientists who use the word woman. And, yeah. And that’s the difference. Like they want you to think that this is the same. Like that’s, they just do this over and over that they equate everything and try to muddy the waters and trick people who don’t pay attention.SYKES: Okay. I want to agree with you and disagree in, part, okay. I want to agree that it is a, crucial distinction. Private actors versus government actors. There’s a reason why we [00:20:00] treat them differently. I mean, first of all, the Constitution treats them differently because government power is so great because government power is coercive because the government can take away your freedom and your life and, can and destroy you.So that’s why, the First Amendment says that private individuals can engage in the suppression of speech, but the government cannot. Now, having said that, the, that the distinction is important. I do think that that the, cancel culture that existed for the last what decade or so was primarily private actors, but it was an attack on free speechIt was not an attack on the first amendment. And those are, there’s a slight distinction and the attack on free speech. I think serve to hollow out the support for the values that you and I are talking about here. You, I’m watching [00:21:00] this juggernaut attacking pre expression and the lack of effective pushback, and I’m afraid that what happened was there was a tenser movement from the illiberal left and the illiberal, right?Basically saying, yeah, we think it’s okay to suppress speech. Let’s call, let’s equate speech with violence. Let’s say that words make me feel unsafe. let’s say that there are certain things that you know mean that you should be driven out of light society or lose your job for, and, I think there, there has been a sense that, yeah, I, I’m, we’re actually in favor of censorship of the ideas we don’t like.And so when the right comes in and says, well. You folks on the left have been saying the speech you don’t like is violent. We’re going to do the same thing. So I think this is where we kind of need to step back and go. We need to have this relearning of what [00:22:00] liberal tolerance is about. Again, the distinction between government and private is absolutely essential, but on the other hand, there is a connective tissue there that if you become intolerant of ideas that you don’t like.Don’t be surprised when it leeches out the way it is now into government action. Are you following me? I’m, because the, these distinctions I think are very, important. I mean, I, lemme tell you what I’m thinking about. Few years ago, do you remember that, Harper’s letter you had a lot of senten sent center, right center left.Writers write a letter, talk to you about, Hey, we ought to have vigorous debate in this country. We ought to have free speech. We ought not to destroy people’s lives because of what they say. There was tremendous blowback against that declaration of free speech. Almost all of it from the left, from the Identitarian left, so that now I do think that they have [00:23:00] eroded some of those values that’s made it easier for what Trump is doing with governmentDid liberals give up on persuasion after same-sex marriage rightfully won?SYKES: And I’m sorry to have gone on for so long then.SHEFFIELD: no, that’s all right. I mean. Yeah, it’s there, is something there that I agree with. For sure. And it’s, I think what it, but I’m not, I don’t think I agree with everything. But you know, what I would say is that the idea that I would like the left to go to, to learn from how same-sex marriage became the law of the land.and people were voting for it because that was a movement that, and I know a lot of the people that were involved with it. They were saying, look, we’re, we are going to make all the arguments for what we want and what we believe is morally right, including arguments that are not morally based at all.So we’ll make practical arguments. We will make legal arguments, we will make pragmatic arguments about in terms of family so, so [00:24:00] they, they just offered. All possible arguments, including religious arguments because in fact there’s, a strong case for religious, viewpoint of same sex marriage.and, they won by doing that. And there’s, so after that though, people did not pay attention to how that movement won. And instead they said, well. We’re just going to only make moral arguments, about our subsequent beliefs. So whether, it was things like, transgender rights, which I support a hundred percent.but like, you can’t bully people into supporting a position that they don’t understand. So it, but if you can phrase it in a way that is saying, look, from your standpoint, this makes sense and it doesn’t hurt You And because you know the reality is. The percentage of people who are trans in the world is, way less than 1%.So, and Charlie Baker, the [00:25:00] NCAA president, said, look, there’s, there were fewer than 10 trans athletes in the entire ncaa. This is more than 550,000 people, less than 10 of them. So this is not a thing to get upset about if you have people that are trans in sports, like it’s a distraction. That’s what it is.And, but we have to be able to make these arguments that don’t require people to, because we have to be able to separate between the reason for wanting something and, people should be able to agree with you for a different reason. and I think that was the flaw of, the pre-Trump left, if you will.SYKES: Well, yeah, I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole to tell you about the, trans issue in, any depth. But, there was this attempt to, impose this orthodoxy that you must believe all of these things, otherwise [00:26:00] you were, going to be cast in outer darkness. And I think that backfired badly.that. Rather than having an open discussion about it they tried to shut it down and I don’t think it’s working.Charlie’s and Matt’s encounters with right-wing extremism during their Republican yearsSYKES: lemme take the conversation in a slightly different direction. And I know you and I have had this conversation before and I was thinking about the question you asked about when I was back in conservative media, did I see some of these other trends out there?And, the answer is that, yeah, I, remember in the before times that there was the stream of the Christian right. It felt like it was from a completely different intellectual tradition than the one that I thought was becoming dominant conservatism, by the way, I was wrong about that, obviously, and I mean, I remember having discussions where I was very much taken aback by the sort of latent authoritarianism on the part of many people who clearly did not like the idea.A [00:27:00] separation of 13 state would deny that it actually even existed or that it should exist. I remember a caller, I can’t even remember what decade it was, who it was kind of challenging him. He said, so do you think that school should have, prayer in school? Yes, he did. I said, which prayers?good. The good prayers. Okay. Would it be appropriate for a public school to require students to say the Hail Mary every single day? He said Yes, I think that would be a really, good idea. And I’m thinking, okay, well wait. We are a long way from sort of, I, I think the general consensus opinion on all of this.But there were people out there who took a very different view. The other area that I always found kind of disturbing and I-- look, I mean, we, have a, very complicated history in this country, including in places [00:28:00] like Wisconsin about race, and there were latent attitudes, particularly about immigrants and about other issues. And every once in a while that would break through and somebody would say something that was, egregiously, bigoted back in the four times you could push back against that.And if you listen to, and whatever you think about George W. Bush or MIT Romney or John McCain, they did throughout their careers would say, wait, This is not who we are. We’re not going to engage in that kind of racism or bigot tricks. We need to appeal to our better angels. And again, for a long time, I felt, and I’m not sure I was totally wrong about this.When you did that, people would go, okay, That was sort of in the back of my mind, or that’s what my uncle might say. But yeah, I don’t want to be that person. I let’s think about this differently. So there was an alternative pen out for conservatism when you had [00:29:00] leaders were morally based.And again, whatever you think about their politics. Remember how George W. Bush handled the question the question of anti-Muslim bigotry after nine 11. You remember how John McCain pushed back against somebody at a rally that said that, you got a accused Barack Obama being a Muslim terrorist or something.Those voices are gone. So now what you have is you have people like Donald Trump and Stephen Miller who are, and JD Vance and others. Ing on the worst impulses. They are giving permission to people to indulge in the kinds of, I don’t hate his that we thought that we had exiled from the movement.And this is the other big law. I think ofSYKES: all of the efforts for years that people had to. Up right wing [00:30:00] politics or conservative politics, and the Trump era has just completely blown that up. So again, I get frustrated with the people who say, well, you’ve always been raised.I mean, look at what Buckley wrote back in the 1950s. Look at the Southern strategy. Look at various other things. All of that was there, but I thought that the arc could have been bent the other way. Clearly it didn’t. Maybe I was wrong, but it’s not a straight line continuum.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, it isn’t. And again, that’s a great point.And and I personally also encountered that in as a conservative blogger that I Had colleagues that they would write posts saying that they would get mad at, CBS for having a character that was a lesbian Yeah. On their show. and they would, write that up and I would look at that and say.This is, junk. Like, I don’t want this on my site. who cares if they have a lesbian [00:31:00] character? Who cares if there’s a gay couple on this show? Like, if you don’t like it, don’t watch it. You know it. They’re not doing anything to you by having these characters and, they’re not saying, oh, you have to be gay.No, they’re not saying that. They’re saying gay people exist. And you know what? They’ve been alone. You don’t have to support same-sex marriage, whatever their existence is not an oppression. And and, but they continued to have those opinions and I continued to see ‘em and that was, it was a source of friction for me with, some of my former colleagues because they didn’t believe, and they still don’t so I did see that, that it, was like two strands that were always there, but even,How Republican campaign operatives encouraged racism and conspiracismSHEFFIELD: This idea, of this recessive Eugene, as you’re calling it, or, what I call the reactionary tradition, it’s the political operatives, the, they knew it was there and they encouraged it a lot more. They exploit it.SYKES: [00:32:00] Yes, they did.SHEFFIELD: Yeah. and I think that’s something also that, a lot of people on the, center to left don’t quite understand is that people like you and I, we were also Duke.That people lied to us about what they were doing and who they were courting, because while they might have while a lot of them would publicly say, oh, I don’t want this racism stuff, they would also want them to vote for that. Like they would, or they might say, well, don’t say the Christian nationalist stuff in public, but make sure to vote for me.And like, so it was like they created this. Well, Frankenstein Monster in a lot of ways. Well, they, didn’t let us know that they were doing it and we didn’t we had no idea.SYKES: Well, in fairness, okay. I would like to agree with you on that. But I think at some level we did, or I did you need that they were going on because.I mean, again, I mean, I, can go back and find things that I wrote and I was like, [00:33:00] we need to fight against these people. We need to, distance ourselves from these people. We can’t be the party of idiots anymore. We need to, I did a cover story for a public policy magazine before Tom saying we need to get rid of the crap poss and everything.But I think part of what was going on though, and I’m, I wish I could say they all lied about it. But I think that a lot of us simply made that sort of, let’s look the other way, let’s look the other way because this is the coalition and we needed the coalition. We needed all of those votes.So there was a little bit of wink win. I mean, I, remember going to certain meetings and there’d be some craziest person. I mean, just there out off the wall. And it was like, okay what am I going to do about that person? Am I going to throw them out of the room? Or they’re going to end up voting.For the candidates that I was supporting. So I, think that there was a moral feeling on the part of people like me that we knew that was going on, [00:34:00] and yet thinking that this is just part of, this is the way, this is the way it works. I mean, the southern strategy was not a secret.some of the stuff that, some of the, so Who was, who was the Bush? actually, I’m sorry. Forgetting his nickname. Water Thelia. We kind of knew what Leet waters were up to and it was like the game playing and, this is something I worry about in politics today and in the media, which I call a hack application of the media.Is that we have too many political operatives and too many political consultants who we now treat like somehow as if they are legitimate journalists or pundits. And the reaction is these are hired guns. These are people who basically, you bring in, you give them the money when you go out and say, get the job done.And I don’t really want to know how it’s, I don’t really want to know all the stuff you do. And so I [00:35:00] think that. Unfortunately, there’s some, not a real distinction between the people who are sitting around thinking what is right, what is wrong? What do we believe, what do we not believe? And that we’ve seeded a lot of that to what works, what is effective, what moves the dial?How can I raise more money off this outrage? But yes, for years and years. I think, politicians, Republican politicians tended to be one thing while exploiting something who was below them, and they were very surprised that what was below them was uncontrollable.The analogy that I’ve used is imagine. You’ve been growing, you’ve been growing ba at a baby alligator in your bathtub for years, and then suddenly you were really surprised that it got big and it crawled outta the bathtub and it’s going down the street and it’s eating people. It was your alligator.You should have known. Right. But you are somewhat responsible for the baby alligator. [00:36:00]SHEFFIELD: Well, yeah. Yeah. That’s and definitely a true point. And, like Bush when he was going against John McCain, his people put out a false rumor that John Mcgain had a black child out of wedlock.and of course they, denied that it was them, but yeah, it was them. Yeah.SYKES: But it was, yeah.SHEFFIELD: And and so, yeah, so like there, there was this, continuous operation. And the same thing I remember also seeing, some of this Christian nationalism that like for me, ‘cause I left this world before Trump. And it was a lot harder, I’ll tell you, because there was no infrastructure out there saying, okay, what’s happening to the Republican party? Nobody was, nobody wanted to, pursue that story when I was trying to tell them about it.But, I remember watching Tony Gherkins, the, the head of the American, family or whatever it is and he was saying, that Christians who believe in same-sex [00:37:00] marriage, they don’t deserve religious liberty because it’s just fake. It’s fake. They’re lying. They’re not real Christians. And so if they want the religious right to perform same-sex weddings, well, they shouldn’t have it because they’re not having a traditionalSHEFFIELD: belief, so therefore they, to get I religious liberty and I thought these guys were marginalized.SYKES: See, this was my mistake. And I think a lot of our mistake, we thought those voices were on the fringes and were marginalized. It turns out well, they certainly are no longer, people like that. Now they’re at the table.The criminalization of Christianity narrativeSHEFFIELD: Yeah. And yeah, exactly. And so like for most of my career as a conservative operative and commentator I didn’t really pay attention to the people because I thought, well, they’re dumb. their arguments are crap and who cares whatever. eventually I realized, oh gosh, these people actually, comprise plurality of the voters, and, but it’s also that the conservative be, a lot of them [00:38:00] became more radicalized because they were lied to because so many people who are religious conservatives, they don’t understand that just because people don’t agree with you doesn’t mean that you are going to be criminalized.And that narrative of the criminalization of Christianity. Like they really have sold that to people and it’s been very, effective to them. They tell you that disagreement is oppression. Well, it’s not.SYKES: Well, and very, effectively what MAGA has done is it has really played the victim card.And again, this is very, convinced their supporters and particularly Christians, that they are persecuted, they’re coming for you and you are the victim. The irony is, and this was, I’m dating myself of course. Is that back in the early 1990s, I wrote a book called A Nation of Victims.This new culture that everybody wanted to be a victim because it gave you political clout. provided a certain amount of innocence. But I never imagined that [00:39:00] conservative Republicans would embrace that culture of victimization as aggressively as they have, or frankly, as effectively as they have.In fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, and he has done this very, effectively. When he was being charged criminally with all those indictments, he would say, they’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you, or they’re coming after me because they want to get you and identify I am in the way.and in the, on the Christian right, this, sense that you’re talking about, that that, they are somehow under siege all the time. It’s critical to understand their radicalization and their politics. It’s also important to understand why they’re willing to tolerate so many things it seems so aggressively unchristian, which is they’re basically saying we’re huddled in the basement. They’re kicking down the doors. We can’t afford to have qualms about these other things other, and they’ve convinced these people, [00:40:00] in the absence of any evidence, that in fact that’s going on.SHEFFIELD: They have and they’ve just completely turned around the ideas of Jesus saying that my kingdom is not of this world, so, oh my God the entire point of what he was saying was, look, people are going to, most people will disagree with you. Most people won’t like you. The government isn’t going to implement your ideas, and you should be okay with that because that’s not what you’re here for.You’re not here. To put your values into the law. You’re here to be a good person and to, do good works. That’s the point of what this is.But they’ve, switched it. They’ve completely inverted and said, no, my identity is what matters. And that was always one thing that I always thought was interesting when Trump was very first coming along in the Republican primaries in 20 15, 20 16, that I predicted in 2015 that he would win.SYKES: Did you?SHEFFIELD: Everybody thought I was nuts. but I was Right. And I mean, one of the things that I noticed was that the [00:41:00] people who were the most supportive of Trump in the beginning were the, self-identified Christians who never went to church.SYKES: yes.And I thought, yes,SHEFFIELD: And that, that’s really what has kind of become, because it makes sense Trump himself, of course, doesn’t, church doesn’t know anything about Christianity, doesn’t know anything about the Bible.SYKES: He doesn’t seem to bother with it.SHEFFIELD: No, because it’s about power.Final thoughtsSYKES: So for, to underline your point about the complete switching about what Jesus said about, government, it, it is interesting watching the, these right wing evangelical Christians now embrace what’s being called Red Caesar. That they want their own Caesar, but as long as he is the red Caesar, they’re all in favor of it.And I think that once you begin to understand. That we also understand, again, going back to our original theme, the radical rate from values that used to be taken for granted, or at least I thought it was to be taken for granted [00:42:00] or maybe had been in a subterranean way or maybe you and I had simply you less than me.I mean, because you paid attention to all of this. We’re always sort of there and latent sort of like a chronic disease.So this is not going to go away. Donald Trump leads the scene we’ll, we won’t have a cult of personality, necessarily, but, things have been un unleashed in our culture and in our politics that are not going away anytime soon, because they have some pretty deep roots.But again, please, for the listeners of, this discussion, don’t make the mistake, don’t buy the MAGA lie that this is normal conservatism. Do not buy Trump’sSYKES: bait and switch that somehow what he is doing is a continuation of, legitimate reformist conservatism. Because it’s not.SHEFFIELD: Yeah, exactly.All right. well, I think you, have, a hard out here in the [00:43:00] next couple minutes, so. Thanks, for being here. So tell us what you’re doing, real quick or any, anything you want to promote here before we head out.SYKES: Well like you, I’m on Substack putting a little most of my energy into independent media these days.So if you, if you have a chance to subscribe to, the contrary newsletter and the to the Contrary podcast. we have been putting out a newsletter pretty much every single day trying to remind everyone that. We are not the crazy ones. Even though it does feel like the world’s losing its mind.SHEFFIELD: All right.Yes, absolutely true. Right. Cool. All right, well thanks for being here, Charlie. Good to see you.SYKES: Thank you so much, Matthew. Anytime.SHEFFIELD: All right. Thanks everybody for watching.SYKES: Yeah, thank you. This is a public episode. 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